HISTORY

Terminal Investment Corporation was originally incorporated in 1938 as an entity to establish bus terminals throughout the lower 48. Randy’s father, J.A. Booker, was an entrepreneur involved in various businesses including busses. As one of the original confederators of the Trail-Ways bus system, J.A. Booker, built a network of bus terminals throughout the southern states and was the originator of the Savannah Beach Bus Lines that served the barrier Island of Tybee Island after the railroad shut down.

After the passing of J.A. Booker, Randy inherited the bus company and continued to operate the bus line under the name of National Bus Service. After a short stint in the television business, Randy returned to the bus line and started to branch out to other transportation related businesses. One of those businesses involved a contract to operate the Savannah Piggy Back Ramp of the SeaBoard Coast Line Railroad. This piggy back ramp needed terminal tractors to operate and in 1975, Randy approached the owner of Builder’s Transports, Charley Gay, seeking to purchase a couple of terminal tractors for his piggy back ramp operation. Charlie Gay wanted to sell all ten units he owned and offered to sell Randy. He took him up on the offer and started to see what he could do with the additional units.

A side line of the bus business was the transportation of Longshoremen from the union hall to the docks. In this relationship, Randy had often noticed the redundancy in equipment at the docks as each Stevedoring company had to own as much equipment as they needed for their busiest day. This wasted equipment ignited the idea of a “neutral pool” of equipment that could service all of the Stevedores. Through his contacts from the Longshoremen bus service, Randy started to promote the idea of equipment pools in the port of Savannah.

Randy eventually became dealers for both Ottawa Truck and Capacity as the need for equipment and parts became bigger and bigger. In addition to new equipment, his experience in the bus business had taught him of the economies of modular design and rebuild-ability of busses. With this knowledge in hand, he started to rebuild terminal tractors on a one-by-one basis as they reached the end of their use life.

Randy was successful in adding the Port of Charleston to the TICO neutral pool system of equipment delivery. Maersk Line's Universal Maritime was the first user in Charleston followed by Sea-Land Service and all others. This gave TICO a regional presence.

In 2005 TICO opened its new manufacturing facility in Ridgeland South Carolina. This step in manufacturing process has opened the door to retail sales of TICO Terminal Tractors and the new Pro-Safe Bombcart. TICO has the decided advantage of operating in excess of 1,000 TICO Terminal Tractors and a 30 year history of operating all makes and models. This experience is integral to every unit we produce and shows it savings in the lowest possible life-cycle costs with the maximum up-time.