Maersk's US logistics pivot: $3B hubs, 90% reliability, 10M parcels (interview)
Maersk bought Vandegrift, Performance Team and LF Logistics to grow from ocean carrier into a North American ground freight and fulfillment player. (interview)
What was changed
Say Maersk and 'ocean carrier' comes to mind — the perception the company has been working to change, North America President Ditlev Blicher said in an interview with Supply Chain Dive. The pivot dates back years: a goal, described by CEO Vincent Clerc, of moving the network away from port-side flow logistics into omnichannel fulfillment and e-commerce, backed by acquisitions — Vandegrift Customs Services in 2019, Performance Team in 2020, whose 24 warehousing sites of about 800,000 square meters were expected to double Maersk's warehousing and distribution footprint, and LF Logistics in 2022.
The land network now behind the brand in the US: Maersk Ground Freight runs about 470 owned or leased trucks, more than 4,000 owned trailers, roughly 140 agency locations, 58 stations and seven linehaul hubs, delivering big-and-bulky items and integrating with contract logistics and air freight. The e-commerce arm delivers 10 million parcels a year and growing, a spokesperson said. In 2024 it opened a Groveport, Ohio fulfillment center for Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale, retail and e-commerce channels; in July 2026 it announced a Hopedale, Massachusetts hub for a major unnamed customer.
The deeper fix is what Maersk calls the transload problem: shifting a container from one vessel to another at a hub took 'at best a week.' The company has invested more than $3 billion digitizing its hubs and expanding operational capability, letting it move its East-West trades from a string principle to a hub-and-spoke under the Gemini Cooperation with Hapag-Lloyd. Since the shift in May 2025, Blicher says reliability has for the most part held at around 90% or above, and transload times have been cut in half — company-reported numbers, like the rest.
Why it worked
Perception was the strategic problem: an ocean-carrier brand left value on the table in domestic US logistics, so Maersk bought ground freight, warehousing and fulfillment capability.
The transload bottleneck capped the whole network — a week per container shift — so more than $3B went into digitized hubs that halved it.
String routing spread delays port to port; hub-and-spoke with two or three calls per end buys reliability when one port is disrupted.
What can be applied
A brand known for one leg of the supply chain can buy its way down the rest — but only if it also fixes the physical bottleneck, not just the logo.
Aftermath
Blicher's own scorecard: 'We're nowhere near done, but we're a scalable player in the market, and it's resonating really, really great with the fantastic clients that we have in North America.' The omnichannel pool now serves wholesale, retail and e-commerce from one inventory, the Hopedale hub is announced with its customer unnamed, and every performance figure cited is company-reported.