Greater Cincinnati’s largest private company, Total Quality Logistics, is getting even bigger, thanks to booming growth of artificial intelligence and data centers as well as Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The Union Township-based freight broker, which ships everything from groceries to rockets, expects its annual sales to climb above $10 billion for 2026, an increase of about a third, co-CEO Kerry Byrne told The Enquirer.
“AI is big: We are moving a lot of equipment to build those facilities and to equip them with tech that is needed. That is the hottest area right now,” Byrne said in an interview.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has shrunk trucking industry
While the U.S. economy is sluggish, Byrne said the company has still managed to grow in the past year thanks to the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants working in the trucking industry. The crackdown has reduced the number of vehicles and is beginning to push up rates from historical lows.
“We had an excess capacity out there. There were too many trucks, too much capacity,” Byrne said. “Because of that enforcement … you saw capacity start to exit the industry which tightens things up.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation claims 30,000 illegally issued licenses to unvetted foreign drivers have been revoked since 2025 under the crackdown.
Byrne said TQL saw an uptick in business in the last half of 2025, helping it climb out of the “freight recession” that hit the industry after inflation surged in 2022 and pushing annual revenue to $7.5 billion.
TQL growth on track to beat 2022 peak
Shipping 4 million loads a year, TQL forecasts its sales revenue will beat its 2022 high of $8.8 billion.
Earlier this year, the company made its first-ever acquisition of a smaller rival, Laufer Group International. It also opened its first international office, located in Monterrey, Mexico, boosting shipments between the U.S. and Mexico. The new facility joins the 65 offices that TQL has across the U.S.
Due to its continuing growth, TQL is looking to hire more than 250 new workers in Cincinnati and 1,000 total nationwide. The company currently employs about 3,500 in the Cincinnati region and 9,400 total.
Amid hiring growth, TQL faces lawsuits by former employees
While 2026 may mark new sales highs for TQL, it’s also a year where the company faced renewed scrutiny of its treatment of workers.
In March, TQL was slapped with a $22.5 million judgment by a Hamilton County jury in a lawsuit brought by a former worker who blamed the death of her premature baby on the company’s refusal to accommodate her doctor’s orders to work from home. TQL has filed a motion with the court for a new trial in the case, according to court documents.
The company is also grinding through a 16-year-old legal battle over overtime. In 2023, a federal judge ruled that TQL owed potentially thousands of former workers overtime pay for hours they worked after being misclassified as management-level “exempt” workers.
The case is still not resolved as both sides fight over how much overtime the workers are entitled to be paid, according to court documents.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: TQL sales soar amid AI, data centers and Trump immigration crackdown
Reporting by Alexander Coolidge, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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By Alexander Coolidge, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
