Matheson sets Reno growth

It’s only a 12-minute drive from Reno-Tahoe International Airport to the facilities of Matheson Flight Extenders on Spice Island Drive in Sparks.

But Glen Gates, president of the company, wants that time back.

Matheson Flight Extenders, a unit of Sacramento-based Matheson Trucking Inc., is negotiating to establish a facility even closer to the airport to reduce “stem time” — the logistics industry’s description of the nonproductive minutes that cargo sits on trucks.

“We have a very short window,” he says. “We want to shorten that stem time.”

Gates told an air-cargo industry association a couple of weeks ago that Matheson Flight Extenders plans to grow its business by more than 60 percent from today through 2019.

“Reno is strategically important to us,” he said in an interview last week.

The position of the Reno-Sparks area as hub for major shipping and distribution companies, as well as its proximity to key California markets make it an attractive area for growth, Gates said.

Matheson Flight Extenders works in 16 markets. Its crews ameet arriving aircraft — UPS or FedEx, for instance — unload containers and haul them to locations where packages are sorted and weighed.

Gates told the industry group this month that Matheson Flight Extenders has the infrastructure in place to potentially triple is package-handling volume as the national economy continues to recover.

He said air-cargo volumes are increasingly steadily — if somewhat slowly — as consumers regain their confidence, domestic manufacturing rebounds and international shipments increase.

“We already are seeing an early and steady rise in package traffic this fall,” he said.