Earlier this month, Iowa-based trucker Heartland Express Inc. dismissed its auditing firm of 16 years, KPMG LLP, citing differences over internal communication and procedures after the firm’s acquisition last July of Interstate Distributor Co.
The apparent dust-up highlights a key issue facing a trucking market where mergers and acquisitions are heating up: the value truckers place on the equipment and the business they’re acquiring.
“There has to be some consistency in the methodology of how you value things when you buy them,” said Mike Regan, chief of relationship development with logistics and freight management consultancy TranzAct Technologies Inc.
In the $113m deal last July, Heartland acquired IDC’s fleet of 1,350 trucks. At the time, Heartland said in a statement the “purchase accounting remains ongoing” and that the value of IDC’s assets, including the trucks, “could be reduced versus the values previously recorded by IDC due to shorter useful lives.”
