People and Places Community
Yandell — Just Keep Truckin' Genevieve Hand If you’ve had a Bay Area commute at any point in the last 75 years, the name “Yandell” might ring a bell. Not sure why? Picture the name in green cursive, splayed across the side of a semi-truck. Yes, Yandell Truckaway, Inc. is the company whose fleet of trucks has kept us company on the highways and helped supply many businesses, both local and farther flung,
for generations. What you may not know is that Yandell’s headquarters is right here, in the Benicia Industrial Park. We sat down with Yandell’s VP, Alicia Yandell Hamilton, to learn more about this company whose operations have become an integral part of the Bay Area business community.
10 • Benicia Magazine
BM: Please begin by telling us a little about the background of Yandell Truckaway, Inc. AYH: We are family owned and operated. Our company was founded in 1945 by my grandparents, Jack and Dorothy Yandell. My grandfather was a heavyduty truck driver – one of the drivers who took the dirt out of the Caldecott tunnel and brought it to what’s now Treasure Island. It was my grandmother’s idea to start the company. Our first office was right down the street from the OwensIllinois Glass plant, so we were hired to bring empty glass from Oakland up to Napa Valley for various wineries, which established our relationship with the wine industry. At the same time, Martinelli’s Apple Juice was operating in Salinas, so since 1945 we’ve been the sole provider for Marinelli’s Apple Juice in the Salinas/Watsonville area. In the 1950s, we got into the warehousing industry. My dad says it’s like a salt and pepper operation: when you have a warehouse, you need trucks to bring products in and ship goods out. Our big boon for the warehouse industry came in the ‘80s and ‘90s with the empty glass repacking business. This was around when we began establishing warehouses in Benicia’s Industrial Park and we’ve been present here ever since. Historically, our trucking operations were domiciled in Oakland, San Leandro, and Pleasant Hill. When more space opened up in Benicia’s Industrial Park in 2016, we realized it was the perfect opportunity to combine our trucking and warehouse operations under one roof for the first time in the company’s history. We are very committed to Benicia. From a logistical standpoint, it’s our sweet spot. You can get to the port of Oakland, I-5, I-80, the Central Valley, Napa Valley, etc., all from Benicia. There’s also quite a talent pool that we can draw from in this area.
want to just be known as a “mom and pop” shop, but instead to compete with the bigger companies. We want to do that by reaffirming our focus on technology; pushing the tech platforms we’re currently using, ensuring that our clients are getting real time data. This is a time when everyone is used to the Amazon[.com] model when it comes to ordering and receiving, and that’s what we’re looking at moving toward, from an operational standpoint. We’ve taken on an additional 100,000sq.ft. in the Industrial Park and have outgrown our flagship location. Currently we have four warehouses in Benicia, one in Fairfield, we have a truckyard in Stockton, and we have a facility in the Salinas/Watsonville area that exclusively services Martinelli’s Apple Juice. We are frequently asked if we have plans to expand out-of-state, and while this isn’t off the table, it would take the right partnership with an existing company to make it worthwhile. Instead, we are extending operations here, in Benicia. We feel that this geographic location has a lot to offer. The predominant industry we service is the wine industry – 50-60% of what we do is wine-related. But we’re also focused on sustainability. We were the first private fleet in the US to make a commitment to Tesla for the Tesla semitruck. To that end, we’ve been working with Tesla and communicating with the City of Benicia to determine how to power the trucks. We’ve also implemented a 1:2 ratio on the outbound of wine products. For every load of empty wine bottles brought in, we send out two loads of wine. This creates a more sustainable circle of product transportation. We also have the capability of storing wine in our refrigerated warehouses, which assists shippers who might be consolidating distributions before hitting the road to Texas, Missouri, etc.
BM: What do you have planned for the future of the company?
BM: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected business?
AYH: As we move into the 3rd generation of this company, we’re really pushing to be on the forefront of technology. We don’t
AYH: Under normal circumstances, I work from home two days per week so that I can help balance my kids’
