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Oct 1, 1999 12:00 PM

WHEN the price of internal growth climbed too high, the owners of Mississippi Transport Inc, Stillwater, Minnesota, went looking for a white knight. They found it in Liquid Transport Corp.

In January 1999, the Minnesota tank truck carrier was acquired by Liquid Transport. Despite the new ownership, not much seems to have changed. Mississippi Transport is still operating pretty much the way it did before. Lanny Wilhelm, president of Liquid Transport, explains that it makes sense to keep the Mississippi Transport name in place. During nearly 20 years in business, the carrier had built a well-defined niche in the upper Midwest hauling a product mix that is very different from Liquid Transport's.

"Mississippi Transport was a well-established company and is well respected," Wilhelm says. "It has its own niche marketplace, and we didn't want to lose that. We see a lot of opportunity to expand that marketplace in the future. "This is our first real foothold in the upper Midwest."

For everyone at Mississippi Transport, it has been a win-win deal. "We went looking for a partner because we wanted to grow," says Christopher R Ogren, Mississippi Transport vice-president. "We had to get bigger to remain a successful player. Liquid Transport gives us an opportunity to get into new areas such as chemicals."

Mississippi Transport was established in 1980 as a sister company of a petroleum marketer. The carrier became the largest hauler of gasoline in Minnesota.

A fleet of 65 tractors and 75 tank trailers operates from terminals in the Minneapolis-St Paul area and Duluth. Cargoes include refined petroleum products, LP-gas, asphalt, and carbon dioxide.

Shipments are hauled throughout Minnesota, northern Iowa, and western Wisconsin. The carrier has a small amount of traffic into the Dakotas. A growing amount of business is done with customers in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. "We haul gasoline, asphalt, and carbon dioxide into Canada," Ogren says. "We have some petroleum products coming out of Winnipeg, Manitoba."