Pacer International

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Pacer International emerged as an independent company in May 1999, when APL Land Transport Services was recapitalized, acquired Pacer Logistics, and took the Pacer International name. Its signature Stacktrain operation carried domestic freight in double-stacked containers by rail—the kind of unglamorous supply-chain machinery that quietly kept the shelves stocked and the economy humming.

For much of its independent run, Pacer was headquartered in Concord, California. The company assembled a broader menu of intermodal marketing, trucking, freight forwarding, warehousing, distribution, and supply-chain services. In 2009–2010, it centralized operations around Dublin, Ohio, leaving the Concord office space behind. Corporate America: where even a headquarters gets a routing number.

Pacer traded on Nasdaq as PACR and, by 2014, was described as North America’s third-largest intermodal transportation-services provider. On March 31, 2014, XPO Logistics completed its acquisition of Pacer in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at approximately $335 million. Pacer survived the merger as an indirect XPO subsidiary, while its standalone public-company chapter rolled into the long freight train of consolidation.

Our Pacer International collection celebrates the container-stackers, rail-yard strategists, dispatch-board magicians, and logistics lifers behind a company that made moving freight look almost effortless—provided nobody asked where the shipment was at 4:57 p.m. on a Friday.