Trailer Bridge
American freight service company

Trailer Bridge, Inc. is a freight service company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. They offer international and domestic shipping with primary international calls to San Juan, Puerto Rico and Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
History
Trailer Bridge was founded in 1991 by Malcom McLean, who is recognized in the industry as "The Father of Containerization". McLean had previously started McLean Trucking Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which he built into one of the largest trucking companies in the United States. He saw the need for a service that could, in the words of the company, provide "true single-carrier responsibility across the United States and on to Puerto Rico". In April 1991, McLean founded Trailer Bridge, and in the following February, Trailer Bridge made its first shipment from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In 1997, Trailer Bridge went public on NASDAQ and moved its headquarters to Jacksonville. Over the years, it expanded its fleet and capacity, and in 2000, it unveiled its shipment tracking tool. In 2004, Trailer Bridge purchased all of Kadampanattu Corporation's stock, thus gaining two 736-foot, triple-deck, ro/ro barges.
“Trailer Bridge” enters the record as american freight service company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Trailer, Bridge and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Trailer Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Trailer, Bridge and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7832790. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1997, 2000 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trailer Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.