Schneider Is Hungry for Acquisitions, Its Executives Say

“We’re absolutely interested in acquisitions going forward, but we’re going to be disciplined," Filter said. (sanfel/Getty Images)

Schneider’s enthusiasm for expanding through acquisition is mounting as the capacity-led freight market recovery continues, senior executives at the carrier said June 9.

Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider last opened its coffers for an acquisition in November 2024 with the $390 million purchase of Baltimore-based Cowan Systems.

“We are still eager to flex our muscles … because we think we’ve created a really good process for acquiring companies,” incoming CEO Jim Filter told attendees of the Wells Fargo Industrials & Materials Conference.

Schneider’s business model concentrates on three segments: truckload, 70% of which is dedicated business; intermodal; and logistics, including contract logistics, brokerage and power only.

The company ranks No. 10 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America, No. 7 among truckload/dedicated carriers and No. 4 in the intermodal/drayage rankings, as well as No. 18 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies.

“We’re absolutely interested in acquisitions going forward, but we’re going to be disciplined. We’re not looking at doing fixer-uppers,” Filter said at the conference.

“We’ve had three large ones in the last few years that we say all of them are successful. And I don’t think there’s too many or too many carriers that can say that each one of their acquisitions has grown since the point that they made the acquisition. I think it’s actually been the opposite, that quite often they shrink,” added Filter, who is executive vice president and group president of transportation and logistics.

Filter will become CEO starting July 1, the carrier said in January, replacing Mark Rourke as the company’s top executive as part of a planned leadership transition.

Rourke, who has served as CEO since 2019, will become executive chairman.

Under Rourke, the carrier expanded in the intermodal segment and refocused its truckload operations more toward the higher-margin dedicated carrier market through organic and inorganic growth.

Those deals included the $263 million acquisition of Ohio-based Midwest Logistics Systems in January 2022 and the August 2023 purchase of Bridgewater, Mass.-based M&M Transport Systems.

In November 2025, Rourke said at the Baird 55th Annual Global Industrial Conference that Schneider expects to execute an acquisition every 12 to 18 months.

At the same event, Chief Financial Officer Darrell Campbell told investors: “We have a robust pipeline of targets that we’re looking at in terms of acquisitions.”

At the end of 2025, the company said its growth engines were intermodal, brokerage and dedicated trucking.

The company’s dedicated fleet totaled nearly 8,600 tractors near the end of 2025.

Filter told Transport Topics in June 2025 that most of the company’s interest in acquisitions would be in the dedicated arena.

Schneider’s finances have recovered strongly since the Cowan deal, Campbell told attendees of the Wells Fargo event, positioning the company for another purchase.

“We’ve done a really good job of controlling our leverage. Even when we’ve done acquisitions, we’ve delevered pretty quickly,” said the CFO, noting that when Schneider acquired Cowan, its leverage was 0.78. It is now 0.3.

A leverage ratio measures how much debt a company has relative to assets. Leverage ratios help assess financial risk and a company’s ability to meet its obligations.

Such a sound financial foundation meant Schneider’s options were open and it could pursue organic and inorganic growth, Campbell said.