By Sean Shaughnessey

Across the County Line

CAMERON, Mo. — A major national freight carrier plans to open a new service center near Cameron later this summer, bringing nearly 40 jobs and significantly expanding the company’s freight capacity across the region.

XPO confirmed the project in a statement provided directly to Across the County Line.

The new service center will include 32 dock doors and is expected to handle approximately 500,000 pounds—or 250 tons—of freight each day.

“We’re pleased to expand our presence in northern Missouri with the opening of a new service center in Cameron later this summer,” Tony Graham, president of XPO’s West Division, said.

“This facility is an important investment in our network that will allow us to meet increasing demand for freight transportation in the region while continuing to deliver world-class service for our customers.”

According to Graham, the Cameron facility will increase XPO’s freight capacity in the Kansas City metropolitan area by 20 percent.

That places Cameron in a larger regional transportation network extending well beyond Northwest Missouri. The city’s location at the intersection of Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 36 provides access south toward Kansas City, north toward Des Moines and east and west across northern Missouri.

XPO expects to employ nearly 40 people at the facility, including professional truck drivers, dockworkers, customer-service representatives and supervisors.

“We’re actively hiring,” Graham said.

XPO has posted several Cameron positions through its corporate employment website, including openings for local CDL-A truck drivers, forklift operators, customer-service representatives, freight-operations supervisors and a local account executive.

The company’s Cameron job listings identify the operation as part of XPO’s less-than-truckload, or LTL, business.

Unlike a traditional warehouse where goods may remain in storage, an LTL service center typically operates as a transfer point. Freight from multiple customers is unloaded, sorted across a dock and placed on other trailers for regional or local delivery.

XPO’s hiring advertisements indicate the Cameron facility will operate across varying freight schedules that could include days, evenings, nights and weekends.

The company is advertising starting pay of $22.10 per hour for customer-service representatives and $22.85 per hour for forklift operators. XPO also advertises health insurance beginning on an employee’s first day, paid time off, paid holidays, retirement benefits and education assistance for several of the positions.

The Cameron operation already appears in XPO’s online service-center directory under the company code XCE. However, the public listing does not yet identify a street address or a local manager. XPO’s employment postings list only Cameron and the 64429 ZIP code.

The location of the facility has not yet been publicly confirmed, however, there is an indication that the facility will be the old Dohrn Trucking terminal in DeKalb County.

It also remains unclear whether XPO is constructing a new terminal, leasing an existing freight facility or renovating another industrial property.

No broadly distributed public announcement from the City of Cameron or a local economic-development organization appears to have preceded XPO’s hiring campaign.

That leaves several unanswered questions about when local officials became aware of the project, what permits were required and whether public incentives or infrastructure assistance were involved.

A 32-door freight terminal handling approximately half a million pounds per day could also generate considerable tractor-trailer activity. The estimated number of daily truck trips, anticipated operating hours and primary routes into and out of the facility have not yet been disclosed.

The project nevertheless represents a notable private-sector investment for Cameron.

Nearly 40 transportation and logistics positions—many carrying wages and benefits above those offered by typical retail and service-sector employers—would make the terminal one of the more substantial recent employment additions to the community.

XPO is one of North America’s largest providers of less-than-truckload freight transportation. The company’s network moves shipments that are too large for parcel carriers but do not require an entire tractor-trailer from a single customer.

For Cameron, the new facility represents both an economic-development opportunity and a potentially significant increase in the city’s role as a regional transportation hub.

It is also a project that progressed quietly enough that the first widespread indication of XPO’s plans came not from a local announcement, but from the company’s job advertisements.

Across the County Line has requested additional information concerning the facility’s location, opening date, property arrangement and anticipated truck traffic.

This story will be updated as those details become available.