Con-Way Makes a $2-Million Expansion

Regional trucking giant Con-Way Western Express has spent $2 million to expand its service center in Orange.

The center, with 85 employees, can now handle up to 58 trucks at a time on its 15,000-square-foot loading dock.

It provides freight services for about 1,000 businesses in central and north Orange County that don’t have their own trucking operations, usually because they don’t ship enough to fill an entire truck.

Customers call on the company to pick up goods at their factories or warehouses. Con-Way delivers the freight to the service center dock, where it is consolidated into truckload-sized shipments and reloaded into trailers bound for specific destinations.

Almost 100,000 tons of freight was handled at the center last year, says Con-Way spokesman Gary Frantz. The expansion has nearly doubled capacity and will create a need for dozens of new jobs as the business grows, he said.

Con-Way has a second Orange County service center in Irvine, with 75 employees and room for up to 44 trucks at a time. The center, which serves south Orange County exclusively, handled 75,000 tons of freight last year.

The service centers not only provide transfer points for freight, but are the home bases for Con-Way truck fleets. There are 150 trucks at the Orange Center and 125 in Irvine.

The centers provide maintenance, fueling, garage and dispatching services for the fleets.

Buena Park-based Con-Way Western is one of three trucking companies owned by Con-Way Transportation Inc. in Menlo Park. The others are Con-Way Central Express in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Con-Way Southern Express in Fort Worth, Texas.

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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com