IMC Logistics

Mark H. George knew what he was getting into. Born into a family of trucking-industry entrepreneurs, he learned from an early age how crowded, competitive, and complicated the business could be. So when Mark—while still in college—started his own trucking company in Memphis in 1982, it was no accident that he waded into one of the most difficult and ordinarily undesirable specialties in the industry.

He had the foresight, knowledge, and ambition to go where the competition wasn’t.

From its first mile forward, Intermodal Cartage Company was set up to haul the freight that no one else wanted: ocean containers. When a container arrived in Memphis by rail from another country, someone had to work with the foreign-flag ocean carrier, the railroads that saw trucking companies as competitors, and the complexities of U.S. Customs. It was an ugly, arduous business, and that is exactly why it was available.

That was the gamble. IMC Logistics would take the work nobody else wanted, and rather than treat it as leftovers, they resolved to do it bigger and better than anybody else.

Almost 45 years later, IMC Logistics is the largest marine drayage company in the United States, with over a billion dollars in sales and facilities at every major port and rail hub in the country. The strategy has never changed from that first decision: Find the hard, unglamorous work that matters, and do it better than anyone.

As George puts it, “That’s what we’re still doing today.”