TOTE, Inc.: The New look of American Shipping Group

On January 1, 2012 American Shipping Group underwent a dramatic transformation. The company, formerly known as ASG, became TOTE, Inc., and experienced a makeover in logo, look and structure.

Seeing opportunity for market growth, TOTE, Inc. organized its five independently managed businesses in to three groups: Maritime, Logistics and Ship Management.

·      TOTE Maritime: Totem Ocean Trailer Express and Sea Star Line

·      TOTE Ship Management: Interocean American Shipping

·      TOTE Logistics: Alta Logistics and Spectrum Logistics

For now, each company will retain their name, logo and independent branding. The strengths of the individual companies will be enhanced by marketing and sales efforts for the overall portfolio by all TOTE, Inc, affiliated companies.

Choosing to adopt the TOTE name was an easy decision for the organization. “We felt the “America…” name was somewhat limiting with our goal of expanding our logistics services beyond the USA. Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE) has a very strong brand in the trade it services.  It is highly respected so it was an easy decision to utilize that strong brand for the overall parent company branding,” said TOTE, Inc. President Anthony Chiarello.

Totem Ocean Trailer Express was founded in 1975 and offers twice-weekly cargo ship operations between the Port of Tacoma, Washington and the Port of Anchorage, Alaska. The company represents the foundation a much larger Seattle-based operation, Saltchuk Resources. Saltchuk was founded in 1982 with the acquisition of Totem Ocean Trailer Express from Sun Ships. Since then, Saltchuk has grown their portfolio to over twenty independent companies, organized in to six operating groups, TOTE, Inc. being one of them.

The future of TOTE, Inc. is in growing and diversifying an already successful operation. “We will always be interested in expansion of our core maritime businesses - and our clients continue to ask us to provide more than just ocean transportation services,” said Chiarello, “TOTE Logistics is the vehicle by which our value added service offering will be managed and developed beyond what we offer today. Our hope with TOTE Ship Management is to expand both our government supported efforts as well as our private sector fleet management services.”

In January, TOTE announced that James Armstrong has joined TOTE Inc. as President for TOTE Logistics. Armstrong comes from southern California where he served as Senior Vice President, General Manager, Warehousing at Yusen Logistics (Americas), Inc. He brings a strong background in transportation and logistics services and has held key leadership roles within the Maersk global organization in the USA, Canada and Asia. 

Soon thereafter, Kevin D. Kendrick was named Chief Commercial Officer for TOTE, Inc. Kendrick will establish and drive the overall commercial strategy for all operating companies within the TOTE, Inc. organization. Prior to joining TOTE, Inc., Kendrick served as the vice president of the Southeast Region for Damco, USA Inc. Kendrick had been with the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group since 1991, holding various sales development and management roles before joining the Group’s Logistics team in 2001. He was the Director and Senior Director of Maersk Logistics before being named Vice President of Damco.