Rob Sandlin has seen it all. The tank truck veteran boasts over 40 years with Florida Rock & Tank Lines, which evolved into one of the largest fuel haulers in the Southeast in his 22 years as president, culminating with the company’s acquisition by United Petroleum Transports (UPT) in December 2023. Sandlin also is a long-time advocate for the bulk transportation industry, serving as National Tank Truck Carriers and Florida Trucking Association chairman.
Now he’s ready for all new adventures—with his grandkids.
But like the grizzled hero in any good Hollywood story, Sandlin had one last job before rolling into the sunset.
“I promised [UPT Executive Chairman] Greg [Price] I would help him transition this business,” Sandlin told Bulk Transporter. “But I’ve been here more than 40 years. I only had one other job out of college.
“So there are other things I need to do.”
With the long transition process nearly complete, Sandlin announced his April 30 retirement in February. “The success we’ve experienced over the course of my career at [former parent] Patriot [Transportation] and Florida Rock and Tank Lines has been very rewarding and something I am immensely proud of,” Sandlin said at the time. “I will miss the daily challenge of building an organization and helping people reach their career goals. I will also miss the interaction and relationships built over the years with our team and customers.
“But the company is in good hands with Greg Price, [UPT President and CEO] Matt Herndon, and their team. I wish them great success.”
Herndon expects it—thanks to Sandlin’s leadership through the UPT-Florida Rock integration, which he insists already is a compelling success story filled with twists and turns: A long history of mutual respect; dramatic deal-making complications; a complex union of people, systems, and equipment; and the transformational creation of one of the largest for-hire fuel-hauling operations in the U.S., with tankers running coast to coast across the South.
“His knowledge of all things Florida Rock made a big difference,” Herndon said.
“I’ve only been here 3½ years, but I spent 27 years at PAM Transport, and there wasn’t a process or procedure there I didn’t know. I built half of them. With Rob at Florida Rock for more than 40 years, he built most of that operation. So it was invaluable to have him around through the transition, along with the fact that these two companies are very similar in nature.”
Art of the deal
Sandlin and Greg’s long-standing friendship, bolstered through their years of NTTC involvement, made the deal possible. “We never competed. That helped because we were able to build a great relationship,” Sandlin said. “So, when the time came, it was an easy conversation to have.” Their gentlemen’s agreement held until summer 2022, when Herndon learned about the passing of longtime Florida Rock CEO Ted Baker while mulling ways to boost UPT’s market share in the Southeast, where he says drivers are easier to recruit.
“I decided to call Rob and start the discussion,” Herndon recalled. “I wanted to know if there was any opportunity there.” As it turns out, there was. But they had to get the Baker family—Patriot’s founders and majority stockholders—on board first. “They weren’t in the business of selling businesses,” Sandlin said. “They were in the business of running businesses.
“So we had to make sure they were comfortable with the idea.”
Selling Florida Rock to UPT made perfect sense to Sandlin. “I’ve been here 40 years, so I didn’t want to sell the business to somebody who would come in, rip it apart, fire everybody, and change the culture,” he said. “And the way Greg, Matt, and [UPT Executive Vice Chairman] David [Price] put their organization together, I knew our cultures were closely aligned.” For UPT, the acquisition was a strong geographic and commodity play, accelerating its expansion into new markets and diversification into new product categories, Herndon said.
The only real roadblock was Florida Rock’s listing on the Nasdaq exchange.
“Our prior experience with acquisitions didn’t help when it came to purchasing a public company,” David said. “It's a different ball of wax and another level of intricacies in terms of the protocols you have to follow, documenting all your minutes for the shareholder meetings, and the disclosures.” Those SEC filings, combined with ensuring Sarbanes Oxley compliance and fair value for all parties, extended the process—and left the Prices sweating for weeks.
“There was a ‘go-shop period,’ where we had to make the deal public so someone else could potentially come in and buy it out from underneath us,” David said. “Thankfully, that didn’t happen.”
Florida Rock was accustomed to operating as a publicly traded company, so it never hampered service, Sandlin said. But going private did allow him to hammer down on the UPT-Florida Rock integration. “It eliminated the public-company work that we did quarterly and annually, the meetings, the paperwork, dealing with outside investors—all things I spent a lot of time on.
“That freed me up to take care of our people.”
Blended family
The $65.9 million acquisition was the largest pickup in UPT’s history, surpassing the addition of Abilene, Texas-based Oil Transport in 1997. Their combination created a top 10 tank truck carrier by revenue, fleet size, and load count. Herndon estimates UPT and Florida Rock combine for 2,000 loads per day—and put more than 13 million gallons of fuel in the ground every 24 hours—with a fleet of over 800 trucks, 1,000 trailers, and 1,100 company and contracted drivers.
They also boast more than 30 terminals across 11 Southern states.
Completing a union of that scope is a considerable undertaking, one that took most of 2024, and is ongoing in several ways, Herndon said. But two key factors served to expedite their integration.
First, Florida Rock came with its executive team mostly intact. Former CFO/COO Matt McNulty departed in May 2024 to join another Baker family business, but Jeff Paulsen, who arrived in April 2024, quickly filled his COO role and also stepped in as Florida Rock president when Sandlin retired. “I couldn’t be happier with how Rob maintained Florida Rock’s leadership and culture,” Herndon said. “As a family-owned business, that was important to us.” Second, the family didn’t merge the two carriers, instead preserving their identities as sister operations under a newly formed holding company. “That’s the beauty of this transaction,” Herndon said. “We didn’t touch any of Florida Rock’s operating entities, so their terminals are intact, their people are still there, and their day-to-day activities didn’t change much.”
UPT acquired its name from Sun Oil Company in 1980, when the family still operated Oklahoma Tank Lines, the legacy company Greg’s father, Keith Price, founded in 1966. The Prices ran both logos under one DOT authority until rebranding in 2012. But David insists this situation is dissimilar. “We ran OTL and UPT until there was too much overlap. We were too close to each other, so it didn’t make any sense,” he shared. “This is a much different because UPT and Florida Rock are two separate companies with their own leadership structures and markets.”
Added Herndon: “Florida Rock’s people are proud of their name—and we committed to them we’re not changing it.”
The sisters did, however, merge many back-office systems and functions under their corporate parent. They selected Paycom as a singular payroll program, combined benefit and insurance plans, and streamlined equipment purchasing as part of an efficiency-boosting assimilation. Both companies used TMW’s transportation management system, but they had to make their software “speak the same dialect,” and migrate UPT from on-premises servers to Florida Rock’s cloud-based version; and they continue to utilize different electronic-logging device (ELD) and camera technology. “You have to ensure you’re doing things that are in the best interest of the overall company, while not creating too big a problem in any one operating entity,” Sandlin said. “Because change is not always perceived as good.
“So you have to be sure the changes you do make are working well.”
Better together
Herndon gave their efforts an A-minus, saying there were a few “hiccups” because integrations are never perfect. “Could we have done better by running redundant systems for a while? Sure. And maybe that’s something we try next time,” he said. “But that’s expensive, too, and can also cause other issues.” David, however, is pleased with their progress. For him, the value created was worth any minor complications. “At the end of the day, everyone’s satisfied with how the first year went, and I’m hoping to maintain that momentum,” he said.
Ongoing collaboration will only accelerate improvement, he added. “We didn’t come in and say, ‘You’re going to start doing it the UPT way,’” David said. “Our mentality is we can learn from each other, and we’re still doing that. UPT has picked up things from Florida Rock, and vice versa, that improved our operations for customers and drivers—our two most important constituents.
“If we don’t have either of them, we have nothing.”
Internal benefits include expanded maintenance and emergency response support, enhanced equipment buying power in vendor negotiations, and exponential opportunities for career advancement or relocation—just to name a few. “We haul a lot of chemicals from Texas to Florida, and historically we came back empty most of the time,” Herndon divulged. “Now we have some synergies working where we can backhaul loads from Florida to Texas.”
Synergies extend to external relationships. With only a 40% overlap in their existing customer bases, UPT and Florida Rock gained access to new customers, who, in turn, receive extended service and capacity. “From a best-practices perspective, we can learn from each other’s customers,” Herndon elaborated. “Maybe Florida Rock does something well on a customer’s scorecard, or maybe they figured out the best way to avoid a crossdrop at a specific site.
“Those are things we can adopt on our side that benefit everyone.”
Their constructive cooperation includes honoring the handshake agreement between Sandlin and Greg. “You’ll see one or the other in each state,” Sandlin said. “We’re not going to compete with each other for business.” And their unification is reflected in newly rebranded Florida Rock trucks, which now feature UPT’s aquatone blue and logos that combine Florida Rock’s signature “FR” with UPT’s wavy red lines—and idea Sandlin suggested.
“We held our first combined leadership meeting last October, when we established our goals for 2025, and it went very well,” Herndon said. “The culture was there, and everyone was engaged and excited about our future—and future acquisitions—but we couldn’t have done it without the employees on both sides coming together as one team, one family, working toward common goals.
“It’s not us against them—and that resonates with our people.”
More to come
Florida Rock is UPT’s largest acquisition to date. It won’t be the last.
“This isn’t a one-and-we’re-done type of thing,” David vowed. “We want to continue growing geographically and commodity-wise.”
Herndon said he had three signed non-disclosure agreements on his desk in March, allowing UPT to “take a peak” at potential add-ons. He also planned to enter into a buy-side agreement to increase UPT’s pool of prospects. “We’re going to hire a third-party broker to find some good acquisitions for us,” he said. “The ones we have aren’t bad. But a lot of times it’s better when you the have buy-side folks making phone calls because they’re saying, ‘This is what we’re seeing in the industry, these are the multiples. Are you interested in selling?’”
Future acquisitions could be rolled up under UPT or Florida Rock, depending on where they’re located, or incorporated as a third sister company. “We’ll decide that when the time comes,” David said.
In the meantime, they’re aiming to strengthen cross-team relationships, fill in coverage gaps, pursue diversification, and evaluate new and existing technologies. UPT is searching for ways to leverage Florida Rock’s dry bulk equipment, Florida Rock is eyeing ISO container drayage opportunities at nearby ports, and they’re jointly evaluating Tandem Concepts’ visibility software in an effort to better track and manage customer allocations at loading racks. “It’s almost like a reservation system for fuel allocations,” Paulsen explained. “It could help us improve efficiency, from a driver standpoint, and help us ensure timely deliveries for customers.”
While he and Herndon expand operations, David is determined to maintain both companies’ cultures. “My main focus is continuing to emphasize our mutual family values across both organizations to ensure everyone in this work family upholds them,” he affirmed.
Together, they’re all in on expansion.
After enjoying 20% growth in 2022 and 18% in 2023, UPT stayed flat while integrating Florida Rock last year. So Herndon is zeroed in on fostering organic and inorganic growth, and most importantly, recruiting and retaining drivers. “Our ambition is to be the largest tank truck carrier in the South,” Herndon concluded. Paulsen, on the other hand, is hoping to sustain the momentum Florida Rock generated in 2024—when the carrier proved its worth rout of the UPT gate—while seeking new ways to contribute to their collective success.
“Our operations group at Florida Rock knuckled down and produced one of our better years, in terms of profitability and growth in 2024, despite changes and minor distractions,” Paulsen said. “And I know we’re all looking forward to exploring further growth opportunities.
“I’m excited to be part of this. We’re two well-run companies that are now just one larger well-run company. Nothing needs to be fixed.
“Now it’s all about, ‘What do we want to do together?’”
