ButcherJoseph & Co. Director Robert Reavis was recently featured in Green Auto Market, where he discussed what his firm is seeing with transportation and logistics clients through mergers and acquisitions, and with some clients converting to employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and other employee ownership models.

Truck operators are taking autonomous vehicles seriously, Robert said, but retaining good drivers is usually the bigger concern. Truck drivers tend to be older than the average American blue-collar worker, and pay increases alone aren’t always enough to keep them. That’s pushing more operators toward ESOPs, which give drivers a stronger retirement and earnings package as an incentive to stay.

Robert sees the shift to autonomous trucking as a gradual process, similar to what’s happening in aviation, likely starting with flat, intermediate-distance routes rather than multi-day, cross-country hauls. On the M&A side, he pointed to the growing concentration of wealth among American families as a driver of interest in employee ownership, as aging owners look for the best way to hand a profitable business to their successors.

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About ButcherJoseph & Co.
ButcherJoseph & Co. is a boutique investment banking firm specializing in sale transactions to strategic and financial buyers, employee ownership transactions (ESOPs), capital advisory (debt & equity), valuations and fairness opinions and ESOP strategic consulting. ButcherJoseph is headquartered in St. Louis with a presence in Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Scottsdale, and Washington, D.C.

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