WALLULA, Wash. — Tiger Cool Express has announced plans to acquire the former Union Pacific Railroad cold connect warehouse in Wallula, Washington, to create an intermodal facility.
According to a news release, the facility will be called the Tiger Tri-Cities Logistics Center.
“This will benefit the entire agricultural community in the three-state region by providing cost-effective and environmentally benign transportation capacity,” the news release stated.
“Initially, service is intended to be offered between Wallula and the Northwest Seaport Alliance on-dock facilities for dry and reefer exports (in ISO equipment) as well as between Wallula and Chicago (and beyond) with Tiger Cool Express refrigerated domestic containers and Union Pacific refrigerated boxcars. Service scope is expected to eventually expand into other markets, such as the Interstate 5 corridor and Mexico.”
Steve Van Kirk, Tiger Cool Express’ CEO, said that “despite our continued growth and fleet expansion, we realize that our current customers in the Pacific Northwest have a need for a broader portfolio of services.”
“This will enable us to add export, boxcar and temperature-controlled consolidation services to our current portfolio. It will also allow us to expand our support to local farmers and families by improving the economics of exporting frozen French fries, apples, hay, pulses and other agricultural commodities.”
Theodore Prince, Tiger’s chief strategy officer and co-founder, said: “This is literally back-to-the-future for me. Working for an ocean carrier 25 years ago, we operated barges on the Columbia-Snake River system — in conjunction with our double-stack train network — providing seamless intermodal connectivity to refrigerated and dry exporters. It is exciting to resurrect a similar capacity that will enable agricultural providers to compete more effectively in global markets while removing highway congestion and pollutants.”
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