• Saia was founded in 1924 in response to the many requests Louis Saia Sr., of Houma, LA, received from his customers to haul their goods to New Orleans where he’d travel to pick up produce. The first company “truck” was the family car with the rear seats removed.

• Over the next several decades, Saia continued to expand, establishing terminals throughout Louisiana and Texas. By the mid-1980s, Saia was one of the largest regional LTL carriers in the country, with 23 terminals across five Southeastern states, approximately 1000 employees and over $50 million in revenue.

• In 1987, the Saia family sold the company to Preston Trucking. When Yellow Corporation purchased Preston in 1993, it also acquired Saia. Two years later, Saia merged with Smalley Transportation, another Yellow division, and opened terminals in North and South Carolina and western Texas.

• In 2001, the Action Express and WestEx divisions were integrated under the Saia brand, increasing our direct coverage to 21 states and more than 100 terminals.

• Saia and Jevic Transportation were spun off in 2002 to form an independent, publicly traded company, SCST.

• In 2004, Clark Brothers Transport Inc. and its nine-state, 16-terminal network joined Saia’s network, providing our customers service to key Midwestern markets including Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

• SCST sold Jevic Transportation in 2006, folded all corporate functions into Saia, and the company began trading on the NASDAQ with the ticker symbol “SAIA.”

• In 2007, Saia announced the acquisitions of The Connection Company, of Columbus, OH, and Madison Freight Systems Inc., based in Waunakee, WI.

• In 2008, for the first time in our history, we had over a billion dollars in gross revenue.

• Expanding its capabilities beyond LTL, Saia announced the purchase of The Robart Companies, a Georgia-based firm that provided non-asset based truckload service and third-party logistics, in 2012.

• In 2015, Saia acquired LinkEx Inc., a diversified, asset-light, 3PL based in Dallas, Texas.

• Today, Saia’s operates 200 terminals across the country and employs nearly 14,000 people. Through our network of partners, we provide service to Alaska and Hawaii, plus Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico. Combined with Saia Logistics Services and LinkEx, we provide complete transportation and logistics solutions.

Our Mission

To safely drive our customers’ success with custom solutions built on the three pillars of our service-focused values: people, purpose and performance.

Saia’s Core Values

Customer First

Doing what it takes, in everything we do, means putting the customer first. It doesn’t mean short-changing safety, policies or procedures, or respect, but it means understanding that fundamentally, our customers are at the heart of our business – in everything we do.

Safety

Safety is not a policy or procedure. Safety is a fundamental behavior and practice. It is the unified practice that we can efficiently and effectively all work safely and perform our functions to support individual employees and company goals.

Taking Care of Each Other

Teamwork, empathy, and giving 100 percent. Taking care of each other means leaders caring about employees, employees caring for each other and for customers, and everyone at Saia caring about the company’s purpose and goals.

Dignity and Respect

Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Every employee at Saia has a sense of worth and value that they bring to their role at the company. We must all recognize the humanity in each other and treat others respectfully.

Do the Right Thing

Doing the right thing means making the conscientious choice, the ethical choice, even when no one is looking. Doing the right thing demands commitment to excellence and an awareness that why you do something can be as important as what you do.

Community

As a company and as a team of employees, we must embrace our responsibility to our neighbors, the environment, those with whom we work, and the communities that sustain us. We realize that it is always easy to talk about being a good citizen and yet it is another to put words into action.

Quality is a concept often discussed but seldom defined. Not at Saia. For us, as well as our service groups, quality is everything that goes into creating a positive customer experience. It is the positive tone in our voice when you call and the care with which we handle your shipments. It means showing up when we say we will and delivering your freight as promised. Quality involves every employee, whether they interact directly with you or not, and influences every decision we make as a company.

At Saia, we have developed various signature programs and initiatives to ensure consistently high quality that continues to improve.