It's been a long, somewhat strange trip for regional parcel-delivery carrier LaserShip Inc.

LaserShip was launched in 1986 as a document-delivery company. The dot-com boom of the late 1990s eventually pushed the Vienna, Virginia-based concern into the parcel-delivery world. Since then, it has assembled an impressive geographic footprint for a self-styled regional carrier. 

Late last month, LaserShip added Tennessee to its network with service to Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville. The Tennessee service will increase LaserShip's overall delivery coverage by 18%, the company said.

In the wake of COVID-19, regional parcel-delivery firms like LaserShip have been in huge demand as retailers inundated with e-commerce orders look for delivery capacity anywhere they can find it. LaserShip's customer base has exploded by 400% over the same period in 2020, according to Josh Dinneen, the company's chief commercial officer. The growth has come from companies that have been onboarded so far this year, Dinneen said.

Regional carriers stopped accepting new 2020 business during the late summer and early fall because they felt it would compromise service to their existing customers during the peak holiday shipping season. Retailers began sending holiday forecasts to LaserShip in April, the earliest that's ever happened, Dinneen said.

Though regional carriers are adding capacity, availability will remain tight as e-commerce inexorably gains retail share, according to Dinneen. The supply-demand imbalance is "not a 2021 problem," he said. "This is a permanent shift."

LaserShip will remain aggressive in its geographic expansion, according to Dinneen. It will eventually be in Chicago, and it is "looking very hard" at Texas, he said. The carrier will also deepen its coverage in the states it's already in, he said. 

The Bad With The Good

LaserShip's growth trajectory has not come without its potholes, however. Over the past three years, 547 complaints against the company were lodged with the Better Business Bureau; many of the complaints were detailed and, in one case, explicit language.

LaserShip has also been embroiled in legal and regulatory conflicts over the past seven years, according to various published reports. In 2014, the company reached an $800,000 settlement with drivers in Massachusetts who accused it of misclassifying them as independent contractors. In 2019, it was ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor to pay nearly $600,000 to New Jersey drivers who were also the alleged victims of worker misclassification.

In September 2014, LaserShip reached a $5 million settlement with the city of New York for allegedly delivering more than 120,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes between 2011 and 2013. The suit, which was prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, charged LaserShip with breaking federal and state laws, leading to the loss of nearly $2 million in uncollected taxes.

Since then, Amazon has made tremendous strides in building out its own delivery network. Amazon, which has long used LaserShip for same-day delivery services, remains a partner. LaserShip has never publicly commented on the story. Dinneen did say that the February 2020 hiring of Brent Bissell, a former top executive at third-party logistics giant Ceva Logistics, as CEO was not in response to any fallout from the New York Magazine article. 

The other expert, an executive at another regional carrier who sought anonymity, said the two firms essentially serve the same customers or different customers but with similar parcel-delivery profiles. While LaserShip may be sought after for its capacity, it would likely not retain the business of these demanding shippers if it didn't perform adequately, the executive said.

LaserShip wouldn't comment other than to confirm that the company had changed hands. An American Securities spokesperson and a Greenbriar official did not respond to a request for comment.

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