Peter Stott is chairman and CEO of Market Express.
By Rob Smith – Contributing writer
Jun 9, 2023
Lighthouse Awards recognize companies that have been included on the Private 100 list for five consecutive years.
Market Express
Headquarters: Portland
What it does: Regional transportation
Top executives: Chairman and CEO Peter Stott, President and Chief Marketing Officer Greg Galbraith, Chief Administrative Officer Jay Wilson
Chairman and CEO Peter Stott
Employees: 517
2022 revenue: $248,547,416
Two-year revenue growth: 113.02%
Peter Stott is under no illusion about his company’s future growth.
Stott is chairman and CEO of Market Express LLC, a regional transportation company he co-founded with his nephew, Greg Galbraith, in 2016. For the three years ending in 2022, the Portland-based company recorded 113% revenue growth. It reported almost $250 million in revenue last year.
“The larger you get, of course, the harder it is to repeat,” said Stott, whose company ranked as the Portland Business Journal’s fastest-growing company in Oregon back in 2019. “We’re a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar business now. It’s hard to keep rolling at a thousand percent.”
Market Express is just Stott’s latest endeavor in a highly successful, decades-long entrepreneurial career. Stott founded his first transportation company, Market Transport LTD, as a student at Portland State University back in 1969.
He co-founded forest products company Crown Pacific, served as CEO at development firm ScanlanKemperBard and served on the board of trucking and logistics firm Conway. He remains president at Columbia Investments, a company he founded in 1988.
Stott admitted that he had no idea Market Express would become so successful so quickly. The transportation and logistics company offers intermodal and brokerage services and boasts a fleet of almost 400 trucks and 800 dry and refrigerated trailers in 11 Western states. Growth has been fueled mostly organically but also by several acquisitions.
“I would say I was pleasantly surprised (by our growth), but we knew we had to get from zero to a certain level in a hurry before we could start making any money,” he said. “But I really had no expectation that we would end up where we are today.”
Now, however, the company is coping with a freight recession, meaning that fewer trucks are delivering goods because of manufacturing downturns and weakened consumer demand. A freight recession, Stott noted, generally precedes an economic recession, though he added that the company is well-prepared for any headwinds coming its way.
That confidence is borne out of more than half-a-century as a successful business executive. He said a colleague recently told him that it was an “anxious” time in the freight industry. Stott admitted to being apprehensive but said he’s not really worried.
“In this business you never really relax,” he said. “You worry about your employees and your business, and I worry about the economy.”
Challenges notwithstanding, Stott’s goal is to grow the business to between $500 million and $650 million in top-line revenue within the next five years.
“It’s like hitting the pause button,” he said. “Just make sure that when you come out of it, you’re ready to go.”