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Dalton, Georgia, the carpet capital of the world, has long been ground zero for one of logistics’ most demanding niches: moving massive, damage-prone rolls of flooring that traditional less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers simply couldn’t handle. Forty years ago, in 1986, a company was born here to solve exactly that problem. Originally called Crown Transport, today’s Xpress Global Systems (XGS) has grown from a regional carpet consolidator into a national specialized carrier with a 30-center network, cutting-edge technology, and ambitions that stretch far beyond its founding commodity.
The story begins with the explosive growth of the U.S. flooring industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Home Depot was rapidly becoming the largest single consumer of rolled carpet in the country, accounting for roughly one-third of all carpet sold nationwide. Yet the freight itself was brutal: average rolls weighed 1,300 pounds, couldn’t be stacked, and refused to mix with any other commodity. Traditional LTL carriers struggled with the high service expectations of installation crews waiting on job sites. Crown Transport was created precisely to fill the trucks of its sister companies — Covenant Logistics and U.S. Xpress — with this specialized freight.
Micky Miller, who ran Southwest LTL before starting Crown, remembers the era well. The region was carpet-obsessed and just-in-time transportation was everything. “Carpet was such a big deal through the ’90s,” notes one early insider. The company built a defensible niche by perfecting the handling of oversized, damage-sensitive materials that others avoided.
Strategic acquisitions accelerated growth. In 1994, U.S. Xpress Enterprises acquired Crown Transport and operated it as a specialized LTL division. The following year, Crown purchased West Coast rival CSI Reeves — whose founder, Tiny Reeves, had gone to prison for tax evasion — and the combined operation became CSI/Crown. In 1997 it absorbed Rosedale Transport’s U.S. floorcovering LTL business, the largest competitor in the North Georgia market, dramatically expanding its Northeast and Midwest footprint.
By the late 1990s, XGS (still operating under the CSI/Crown name) had begun providing warehousing and distribution services for The Home Depot in Las Vegas, forging what would become one of the industry’s most important partnerships. In 2000 the company acquired Dedicated Transportation’s airport-to-airport business and officially rebranded as Xpress Global Systems, signaling an early push into diversification beyond flooring.
The diversification experiment proved short-lived but instructive. The airfreight operation, which competed head-to-head with Forward Air, was ultimately divested in 2005. The sale refocused XGS squarely on its core floorcovering expertise and allowed a network restructuring. “We’ve always lived to fight another day,” reflected Greg Laminack, current XGS President and a 21-year veteran who spent 14 of those years under U.S. Xpress ownership. “This company is resilient.”
Network expansion continued under private equity. The 2008 acquisition of Pinner Transportation added service centers in Tampa, Louisville, Albuquerque, and Boston. A year later, XGS converted several Mohawk Industries distribution centers — in Little Rock, Albuquerque, Portland, Spokane, and Jacksonville — into its own facilities, deepening ties with the world’s largest flooring manufacturer.
The relationship with Home Depot reached new heights in 2015. A pilot expedited carpet program launched in Baltimore that year was called a “game changer” for the flooring industry. It expanded to Chicago early in 2016 and rolled out nationwide by November. XGS was no longer viewed as just another LTL carrier; it had become a strategic partner to the world’s largest floorcovering consumer.
That same month, U.S. Xpress divested XGS to private-equity firms PCH and Mosaic Investments. The move to independent ownership in April 2015 brought sharper focus and faster decision-making. Aterian Investment Partners acquired the company in December 2018, injecting capital for technology and scale.
The 2021–2022 acquisition spree, including Delta Distribution (largest Midwest competitor), 7 Hills Transportation (adding asset-based capacity), and Pacific Coast Distributors (strengthening the West Coast and Pacific Northwest), dramatically enhanced geographic reach and service consistency. In 2023 XGS expanded into full-service 3PL solutions and general commodity capabilities, deliberately growing non-flooring revenue toward 25 percent of the business. The goal was to create greater density in strategic lanes while still delivering the white-glove service flooring customers demand.
In 2025, LRT Group acquired XGS under parent company XGS Freight, LLC. The strategic owner brings shared resources and long-term stability, opening what executives call “the next phase of growth.” LRT sees XGS as a crucial part of its diversified transportation portfolio, which already includes freight brokerage and truckload assets, and has plans to transform it into a regional LTL for general freight.
Today XGS operates 30 service centers plus corporate headquarters in Dalton, one true cross-dock in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, and a network of long-term agent partners. On-time performance consistently sits in the mid-to-upper 90s. The company has built a robust technology stack with heavy integration into major retailers like Home Depot — offering real-time visibility, instant quoting, and customer portals that were once unimaginable in specialized LTL.
Flooring itself has evolved. Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and luxury vinyl plank (LVP) have grown more than 20 percent annually for the past decade. Much of that volume now arrives as pallets rather than rolls, introducing both new competition and new opportunity. XGS is actively importing LVP and handling related products like doors, windows, cabinets, vanities, molding, and piping that share similar damage-sensitive characteristics.
Laminack, who has witnessed multiple ownership changes and market cycles, sums up the cultural shift: “We went from being in survival mode — ‘I just want to keep my job’ — to ownership, where people grow and thrive.”
Leadership has emphasized operational knowledge in sales, elevated terminal-level accountability, and moved from transactional relationships to true partnerships. A dedicated business-intelligence team now processes data and makes proactive recommendations to customers. Marsha Stone, one of the company’s earliest employees and until recently serving as executive assistant and HR matriarch, embodies XGS’s institutional memory and management continuity. The leadership team remains deeply rooted in North Georgia, a staying force for four decades.
Across every chapter, from the carpet boom of the 1980s to the PE era and now the LRT chapter, XGS has clung to a clear strategic throughline: specialization over commoditization, service reliability in complex freight, and scalable growth without losing hard-won expertise.
As the company enters its fifth decade, executives talk openly about reaching $300–400 million in revenue within three to four years through continued strategic acquisitions and deeper penetration into customers’ supply chains. They are large enough to deliver custom solutions yet small enough to remain agile and customer-obsessed.
In an industry increasingly dominated by mega-carriers chasing scale at any cost, XGS proves there is still tremendous value in doing one difficult thing exceptionally well. Forty years after those first carpet rolls left Dalton, the company that started by filling someone else’s trucks now moves the nation’s flooring, and much more, on its own terms.
Happy 40th anniversary, XGS. Here’s to the next 40 years of white-glove logistics in some of the country’s toughest freight segments.
The post Xpress Global Systems celebrates 40 years of moving the trickiest freight in America appeared first on FreightWaves.
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