Shipping from A to Z

Alaska shipper provides seamless solutions

By David A. James

hen it comes to bringing large volumes of freight into the 49th State, Span Alaska is a top choice for many companies.

“We consolidate and aggregate loads for customers in Alaska,” Fairbanks Sales Manager Joan Johnson says. “Anything from 500 pounds to 60,000 pounds at a time. We work with businesses from retail to manufacturing to oil and gas, fabrication, mining, animal supplies; we bring in products for the big box stores as well as the small business owners.”

Since its founding, Span Alaska has grown substantially. Its corporate offices and receiving facility are in Auburn Washington, and they ship from the Port of Tacoma. The company has a fleet of trucks, hundreds of containers, spacious new freight terminals in Anchorage and Fairbanks, and established ones in Wasilla and Soldotna.

Span Alaska partners with trucking companies across the Lower 48 to move goods to the Tacoma terminal, and the company’s trucks can pick up freight and deliver to just about any road system location in Alaska, from Delta to Denali to Homer. If a shipment is going from, say, Wichita, Kansas, to North Pole, Johnson says, “We can handle that order from the point of origin to the destination, and it would be seamless.” The transporter also coordinates with partner companies for deliveries off the road system.

“We are what I refer to as bricks and mortar,” she says.

Span Alaska’s new Fairbanks terminal, which opened this year, on a sunny afternoon in July.

The shipping company has its own drivers, warehouse workers, dispatch, and customer service. The company owns its facilities, and freight is handled solely by Span Alaska employees from the time it is received until the time it is delivered to the client.

“When a customer is working with us, they’re working with Span Alaska from A to Z. From point of origin to point of destination,” Johnson says, explaining that their relationships with other shipping companies allow them to quote, handle, and dispatch nearly any freight from any ZIP code in the Lower 48.

It’s a system that works well for Fairbanks-based Arctic Fire & Safety. “It’s rare to see reliability, consistency, and trust,” says company president Shane Burnett. “Span provides that to us at Arctic Fire & Safety. Logistics is where our partnership begins, but it carries much further due to people like Joanie.”

Span Alaska has deep roots in the state. It was founded in 1978 by Ray Landry, who wanted to offer Alaska businesses a one-stop shipping option. After more than thirty-five years of significant growth, it was purchased by Evergreen Pacific in 2014. The following year, Evergreen also bought Span Alaska’s chief competitor, Pacific Alaska Freightways, or PAF, and merged the two companies under Span Alaska’s name, doubling the company’s size.

Johnson, whose own career in long-distance shipping began in 1990, had been with PAF since 1994. She says when the two longtime rivals joined forces as one company, “We came together as a team and as a family, and a lot of us are still here.”

In 2016, the company was sold again, this time to Matson, which has been shipping goods to Alaska for more than a century. The resulting combination of expertise and experience positions Span Alaska well for keeping Alaska’s contractors and retailers running.

Johnson says when Span Alaska begins working with a new customer, “We set up a company profile and create a relationship.” Often, she adds, it’s for a long-term contract. After learning what freight a new client needs to ship, Span Alaska provides a rate based on frequency and tonnage, and the particulars of delivering to the customer’s jobsite or business.

Span Alaska ships freight in high-cube containers, and Johnson says it also moves a lot of freight via flatbed, although she says they don’t handle oversized freight.

“Our niche is items that fit within the 45-foot long, 8-foot wide, 8-foot tall containers,” she says.

Johnson lists foundations, electrical and plumbing supplies, raw and structural steel, roofing materials, glass, windows, doors, office equipment, flooring, and more among the many items Span Alaska moves almost daily.

Johnson says the new Anchorage service center, which she described as beautiful, was opened in October 2019. This summer, the company moved into a new 12-acre facility at 770 Old Richardson Highway in Fairbanks.

With more than 200 containers shipping every week, Span Alaska serves a diverse array of Alaska businesses. “It could be a small company that only receives hundreds of pounds, to orders that receive thousands of pounds,” she says. Span Alaska does the work, “and the customer can sit back and relax.”