Family-Owned Business Awards 2024: A. Duie Pyle’s third generation drives firm closer to $1B in revenue
Like so many family-owned businesses, A. Duie Pyle was first run from its founder’s dining room table.
Then based in Coatesville, today the company is nearing the $1 billion revenue mark and has some 4,300 employees, 4.5 million square feet of warehousing space and operations across a 14-state footprint.
It’s a long way from how Alexander Duie Pyle founded his eponymous trucking company 100 years ago, but today the firm, now based in West Chester, is one of the longest enduring such companies in the Northeast.
Launched on April 1, 1924 with a single truck he’d purchased secondhand, Duie Pyle’s grandson and third-generation leader Peter Latta likes to sometimes joke that “fools get into trucking.”
A century later, the multigenerational family business has proved that’s certainly not the case.
Much of its growth has come under the leadership of Latta, who joined the company in 1985 after striking out on his own for a time, including as a lawyer.
“I always knew I’d hang my occupational hat here on the hook someplace,” he said.
At the time he joined the company, his father Jim Latta’s health was starting to decline. Jim Latta, Alexander Duie Pyle’s son-in-law who has since passed, had been with the company since the early 1950s.
Even then it had changed from when Duie Pyle launched the company. While his focus was on steel hauling, and Lukens Steel in Coatesville was his first client – one the company still has – Duie Pyle “would haul whatever people were willing to pay him to haul,” Peter said.
For a time, the company got into household moving before seeing the opportunity in the less-than-truckload, or LTL, business. That became a big focus in the 1950s, prompting the move to West Chester.
Three decades later, when Peter came on board, trucking was being deregulated in what Peter called a “transformative time for the industry.”
At the time, A. Duie Pyle had one LTL terminal, two warehouses, about 100 employees and was generating roughly $10 million in revenue. All those figures have since ballooned.
“There were six regional LTL carriers that owned the market. They had the trucks, the facilities,” Peter recalled. “And today, all six of those companies are out of business and we’ve survived, so it’s pretty incredible.”
A. Duie Pyle’s revenue is projected to hit $835 million in 2024, an 8% increase over $775 million last year.
LTL makes up about 70% of its business. The company operates some 35 LTL service centers. A decade ago, it also branched into dedicated transportation services and has since grown it to over 600 drivers as of last year. That division counts brands like Wegmans, Toll Brothers and W.W. Grainger among its clients.
The company also has a managed truckload, or asset light, business segment, and warehousing services.
“Today, we’re in really a supply chain services business,” Peter said.
The family business extended to a fourth generation in recent years, including by way of Peter’s son Billy Latta, but not before he learned the ropes elsewhere. Foreseeing potential pain points, Peter initiated a family employment policy that stipulates members work elsewhere for at least three years. They also have to be interviewed by the board, not family, before being hired.
Growing up around the business, Billy worked for the company during his summers and eventually decided it was what he wanted to pursue. After taking rotations in various departments and learning to drive the trucks, today he’s focused on operations but admits he’s “still a rookie.”
Billy isn’t the only fourth-generation family member at A. Duie Pyle. His cousin Jack Latta and his brother-in-law Frank Granieri are also in the business.
“We’ve had no contribution in all the achievements,” Billy said, crediting his father for that growth. “Really, our responsibility lies ahead, carrying forward the legacy and making sure that we carry forward the culture that’s been established.”
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