Walter Hoyer laid the foundation for the HOYER Group in 1946.
Now the Hamburg, Germany-based family business is a specialized freight forwarder with an international orientation celebrating 75 years of success. And thanks to the Hoyer family’s far-sightedness, management’s initiative, and a dedicated workforce, the company is one of the world’s leading providers of international logistics in the bulk liquid area, and renowned for its forward-looking, innovative thinking.
“Seventy-five years ago, we were still driving milk around the town’s streets,” said Thomas Hoyer, advisory board chairman of the HOYER Group. “Today, our tank containers travel around the world. In all these years, from reconstruction to the COVID pandemic, we have shown strength and overcome many challenges.”
Innovative thinking and sustainable actions are firmly embedded goals, the company said. The current key points are increased switchover to intermodal transports, avoidance of empty repositioning, the use of lighter-weight tank containers, Euro-6-compliant truck drive systems, and smart-technology-assisted fleet optimization, together with sustainable, profitable growth. As Thomas Hoyer says, “Standing still moves nothing. We also look forward in our anniversary year.
“Our new chief executive officer, Björn Schniederkötter, is working intensively, together with the workforce, to put HOYER in an optimum position for the future.”
Added Schniederkötter: “We have a clear future path in sight, and together we will implement it in a sustainable, value-based way in the spirit of the international family-managed company—as a strong global community.”
On the occasion of the company’s 75th anniversary, the entire Hoyer family and management team say they’re looking back with “gratitude and pride” over the years since its foundation. The company owes its success and current position in the bulk liquid logistics solutions space to all of its employees throughout the world.
“In the anniversary year, we owe special thanks to our employees,” Schniederkötter said. “For their longstanding loyalty, their competence, and the fact that we can always count on them when it really matters.
“That perfectly reflects the special spirit of the family business.”
A few of the milestones in the history of HOYER:
- 1946—Walter Hoyer founds the sole trader company Bruno Hoyer Internationale Fachspedition, taking the company’s name from his father, Bruno Hoyer, who operated a milk wholesale business in Hamburg from 1922 onward.
- 1948—HOYER acquires its first motor vehicle for DM 22,791.20 ($13,196).
- 1959/1960—HOYER carries out its first chemicals transport operations.
- 1960—HOYER founds its first foreign subsidiary in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
- 1969—Walter Hoyer jointly founds “Kombiverkehr” (combined transport), and from then on, he is regarded as a pioneer in this profession.
- 1980—The logistics specialist opens its first overseas company: HOYER USA, New York.
- 1990—The first vehicles are fitted with mobile terminals (satellite communications, Euteltracs). And the first transport movements of foodstuffs in refrigerated reefer tanks take place.
- 2002—HOYER commissions its 10,000th tank container.
- 2011—HOYER achieves sales revenues of EUR 1 billion ($1.13 billion) for the first time.
- 2014—HOYER commissions a training container it had developed in-house. The three-compartment swap body tank is 7.15 meters (23.5 feet) long, and is used for training, presentations, and trade fairs.
- 2019—HOYER reports the 10,000th Smart Tank early in the year.
- 2021—More than 80% of the tank container fleet now is equipped with smart technology.