Xpress Global Systems is celebrating 40 years in business, marking a journey that began in one of the most demanding segments of U.S. freight and evolved into a national specialised transportation platform.
Its origins lie in Dalton, Georgia, long known as the carpet capital of the world, where moving large, damage-prone flooring rolls created a niche that traditional less-than-truckload carriers struggled to manage.
Founded in 1986 as Crown Transport, the company was originally established to solve precisely that operational challenge. Four decades later, under the Xpress Global Systems name, it operates a 30-center network supported by advanced technology and a strategy that now reaches well beyond flooring.
The company’s growth was closely tied to the expansion of the U.S. floor covering industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Home Depot quickly became the largest single consumer of rolled carpet in the country, accounting for roughly one-third of all carpet sold nationwide.
The freight itself was notoriously difficult. Average rolls weighed around 1,300 pounds, could not be stacked and could not easily be mixed with other cargo. At the same time, installation crews required high service standards and precise delivery timing, which made traditional LTL operations ill-suited to the segment.
Crown Transport was originally built to fill the trucks of its sister companies, Covenant Logistics and U.S. Xpress, with this specialised freight.
Micky Miller, who had previously run Southwest LTL before launching Crown, recalled a period when carpet dominated the region’s freight activity and just-in-time transport was critical. The company built a defensible niche by mastering the handling of oversized and damage-sensitive materials that many competitors preferred to avoid.
Growth accelerated through acquisition. In 1994, U.S. Xpress Enterprises acquired Crown Transport and ran it as a specialised LTL division. The following year, Crown bought West Coast rival CSI Reeves, whose founder Tiny Reeves had earlier served prison time for tax evasion. The merged business became CSI/Crown.
In 1997, the company acquired Rosedale Transport’s U.S. floorcovering LTL business, then the largest competitor in North Georgia, significantly expanding its reach into the Northeast and Midwest.
By the late 1990s, still operating under the CSI/Crown name, the business had begun providing warehousing and distribution services for Home Depot in Las Vegas, laying the groundwork for what would become one of its most important strategic partnerships.
In 2000, it acquired Dedicated Transportation’s airport-to-airport business and formally adopted the name Xpress Global Systems, signalling an early diversification push beyond flooring.
That move into airfreight was short-lived. The unit, which competed directly with Forward Air, was divested in 2005, allowing XGS to refocus on its floorcovering expertise and restructure its network.
Greg Laminack, now president of XGS and a 21-year veteran of the business, said resilience has always been part of the company’s DNA. Fourteen of those years were spent under U.S. Xpress ownership.
The private equity years brought further expansion. In 2008, XGS acquired Pinner Transportation, adding service centers in Tampa, Louisville, Albuquerque and Boston. A year later, the company converted several Mohawk Industries distribution centers into its own facilities, including sites in Little Rock, Albuquerque, Portland, Spokane and Jacksonville.
That further deepened ties with the world’s largest flooring manufacturer.
The relationship with Home Depot entered a new phase in 2015, when a pilot expedited carpet programme launched in Baltimore was described as a game changer for the flooring industry. It expanded to Chicago early in 2016 and rolled out nationwide by November.
At that point, XGS was no longer seen simply as another LTL carrier, but as a strategic partner to the country’s largest floorcovering customer.
That same month, U.S. Xpress sold XGS to private equity firms PCH and Mosaic Investments. Independent ownership from April 2015 brought faster decision-making and sharper strategic focus. In December 2018, Aterian Investment Partners acquired the business and injected capital to support technology and scale.
A new acquisition wave followed in 2021 and 2022, including Delta Distribution, 7 Hills Transportation and Pacific Coast Distributors. These deals significantly expanded geographic reach and improved service consistency, particularly in the Midwest, on the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest.
In 2023, XGS expanded further into full-service 3PL and general commodity logistics, with the explicit aim of increasing non-flooring revenue to around 25% of the business. The strategy was designed to create more density in strategic lanes while maintaining the white-glove standards expected by flooring customers.
In 2025, LRT Group acquired XGS through parent company XGS Freight, LLC. The new owner brought long-term stability and shared resources, opening what executives describe as the next growth chapter. LRT sees XGS as a key part of its broader transportation portfolio, which already includes brokerage and truckload assets, and plans to develop it into a regional LTL platform for general freight.
Today, XGS operates 30 service centers, a corporate headquarters in Dalton, a true cross-dock facility in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, and a network of long-standing agent partners. On-time performance consistently sits in the mid-to-upper 90% range.
The company has also built a strong technology stack with deep integration into major retail customers such as Home Depot, offering real-time visibility, instant quoting and customer portals that were once rare in specialised LTL.
The flooring business itself has evolved too. Luxury vinyl tile and luxury vinyl plank have grown by more than 20% annually over the past decade. Much of that volume now moves in pallet form rather than rolls, bringing both new competition and new opportunities.
XGS is also importing LVP and handling adjacent products such as doors, windows, cabinets, vanities, moulding and piping, all of which share similarly sensitive handling requirements.
Laminack said the company’s cultural transformation has been just as significant as its commercial growth. In his view, XGS moved from survival mode to a company where people can grow and thrive. Leadership has increasingly focused on operational knowledge in sales, stronger accountability at terminal level and a shift from transactional relationships toward deeper partnerships.
A dedicated business intelligence team now processes data and provides customers with proactive recommendations.
The business also continues to rely on strong institutional continuity. Long-time employee Marsha Stone, who until recently served as executive assistant and a central HR figure, remains emblematic of that continuity, alongside a leadership team still deeply rooted in North Georgia.
Across every chapter, from the carpet boom of the 1980s through the private equity period and now the LRT era, XGS has remained anchored to a consistent strategy: specialise rather than commoditise, deliver reliability in difficult freight and scale without losing the expertise that made the business valuable in the first place.
Now entering its fifth decade, the company is openly targeting revenues of $300 million to $400 million within three to four years, supported by more acquisitions and deeper integration into customer supply chains.
In a transport market increasingly dominated by mega-carriers chasing scale at any cost, XGS continues to prove that there is still considerable value in doing one difficult thing exceptionally well.
Forty years after the first carpet rolls left Dalton, the company that once filled someone else’s trucks now moves the country’s flooring — and much more — on its own terms.
