Lynden Inc.: In it for the Long Haul.

• Author: ORR, VANESSA
• Position: Brief Article - Company Profile

A little less than a century ago, Lynden Inc., then Lynden Transfer, used horses to haul agricultural products between the Washington state towns of Lynden and Bellingham. Ninety-three years later, it is one of the top 49 Alaskan-owned companies, with gross annual revenues of $330 million in 1999, and over 1,300 employees.

How does a company go from hauling freight in the early days of trucking to becoming a worldwide name in transport, especially in a field that is so highly competitive? According to Lynden's President and CEO, Jim Jansen, the company did it one step at a time.

"We really don't think of ourselves as being that big," said Jansen, of the parent company with 12 operating companies. "What really caused us to diversify was the end of the trans-Alaska pipeline construction. We had the choice to totally scale down, to quit and leave Alaska, or to develop our business in Alaska by diversifying into different transportation modes. Since that time, we've experienced steady growth, but it has happened one piece at a time."

Those pieces include a number of operating companies, including Alaska Marine Lines, Alaska Marine Trucking, Alaska West Express, Knik Construction, Bering Marine, Lynden Transport, Lynden Air Freight, Lynden International, Lynden Air Cargo, Lynden Logistics, LTI Inc. and Alaska Railbelt Marine, as well as joint ventures like the NANA/Lynden Logistics operation at the Red Dog Mine, and Alaska Hovercraft, a joint venture with Cook Inlet Region Inc. While each business operates autonomously, they also all work together to meet customers' needs.

"Our mission statement reads, 'we're customer-driven, quality-focused and efficient in the use of human, capital and information resources,' and our goal is to be the best at what we do, and do it safely," explained Jansen.

This goal drives Lynden to continually improve its services, as well as to look for new technologies and markets in which to develop. Seemingly quite at home in the information age, the company is moving aggressively into the virtual world of the Internet, e-commerce and the paperless office.

"We strongly believe that moving information is as important as moving freight," said Jansen. "We've put a lot of resources into developing this capability at all of our operating companies. More and more customers want a seamless supply chain, and to do that, you need reliability and information as much as you need speed and frequency. At the same time, they want to...