24 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch TP Trucking OTA Carrier Member THERE ARE FEW industries as quintessentially Oregon as the timber industry. But often, the story of how those timber products are moved to their final destination gets lost in the larger conversation about industry operations. That’s where a quintessentially Oregon trucking company like TP Trucking comes in. A More Efficient Way to Serve Customers TP Trucking was formed in 1964 as the transportation division for Timber Products, one of the nation’s most diversified manufacturing resources for the highest-quality wood products. At the time, Timber Products was already a market leader for veneer and plywood products but recognized that there was a logistical problem with getting their products to their customers in a timely manner—a lack of efficient and available trucks. So, like any entrepreneurial, family-owned business, they solved their problem by establishing their own trucking business, TP Trucking. “Timber Products wanted to guarantee that if they had a customer place an order by 2pm, that order would be delivered to the customer in the Bay Area the next day, and that the truck would come back empty and ready to fulfill the next customer order,” said David Hopkins, TP trucking’s operations manager and a member of OTA’s Board of Directors. “Eventually, our trucks started hauling plywood down to Oakland and bringing plywood glue back to our mills here.” This ability to provide direct mill-to-consumer service to their customers resulted in the creation of a full-fledged trucking company. Today, approximately 20% of TP Trucking’s rigs haul products for Timber Products, including veneer, plywood, or wood chips, while the other 80% of its trucks move products for outside companies, generally timber products, steel, or building products. TP Trucking has continued to grow since it was founded nearly 60 years ago and today has locations outside of Oregon, By Jennifer Sitton | OTA Communications Consultant & Christine Logue | OTA VP of Operations This is a chess game, it’s not a checkers game. We don’t move trucks just to move them. We maximize what we can do with them every time we move them.
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