Citing high diesel and insurance costs as well as the the economic downturn, Jevic Transportation of Delanco said today that it was ceasing operations after 27 years.

The Burlington County firm said it would deliver all freight that was within its system before the closing announcement.

“We greatly appreciate the loyalty of our many Jevic customers,” said David H. Gorman, president and CEO.

Gorman added that weakening credit conditions also figured into the decision to close the firm.

Jevic Transportation was founded by Harry Muhlschlegel and his wife, Karen, on the principle that a long-haul trucking firm could serve multiple customers with each of its trucks.

This so-called less-than-truckload carrier (LTL) business, though not unique to Jevic, was a concept that Muhlschlegel built upon.

By adding a computer-assisted scheduling system, an innovative approach for loading trailers, and an intensely solicitous relationship with customers, the company became one of the nation’s fastest-growing LTL carriers by the mid-1990s.

The company said that, for most Jevic employees, today would be the last day of employment with the company but that a limited number of employees would stay on at the firm during the wind-down period.

Gorman’s letter read:

“I regret to inform you that Jevic Transportation Inc. will be discontinuing operations. The current high fuel costs, economic downturn, increasing insurance costs, and tightening credit markets have made this decision necessary. Jevic will stop providing pickup service effective Monday 5/19/08. However, we will continue operating to deliver all freight within our system prior to closing.

“Operations and Customer Service:

“Jevic will not be accepting pickup requests after Friday 5/16/08 and the web and EDI pickup functions will be disabled.

“We will continue to provide Customer Service through the wind down period at 888-Go-Jevic. We ask that you please utilize the automated voice response system as much as possible as the number of calls is expected to be high and there will be longer hold times.

“The Jevic website will remain active and will be updated during the period as well and that should be your primary point of contact for tracing and needed documentation.

“We greatly appreciate the loyalty of our many Jevic customers. It has been our pleasure to provide solutions to your transportation needs over these many years. We are committed to providing the prompt delivery of your shipments in our system and professional customer service for all your needs during this process. Thank you again.”

Harry Muhlschlegel and his wife took the company public in 1997, holding on to 70 percent of its stock.

Muhlschlegel evidently found it frustrating when the company went public.

“Harry likes trucks and to make decisions and get things done. He doesn’t want to spend weeks in meetings,” Jim Molinari, who worked with him there and at another trucking company that Muhlschlegel founded, said last year in an Inquirer interview.

That second company is New Century Transportation.

In addition to new business systems, Jevic, which has more than 1,000 employees, added other distinctive innovations: Its drivers carried business cards, just like senior managers. It was known for good pay and benefits, and thus had little difficulty filling the ranks of its drivers.

Moreover, it made a point of bending over backward to get customers, and to keep them in the fold.

Oftentimes, the company had slightly more freight than would fill a truck. In those cases, the company would send a panel truck out to the destination to handle the overflow. Occasionally, the company would ship freight by air.

National transportation company Yellow Corp. (now known as YRC Worldwide Inc.) bought Jevic in 1999 for $200 million, all cash.

SCS Transportation Inc., which was spun off from Yellow Corp. in 2002, announced in July 2006 that it had sold the assets of its Jevic Transportation unit to an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners Inc., a leveraged buyout and investment fund in Boca Raton, Fla., for $40 million plus $12 million in current income-tax benefits.

According to a news release when Jevic was most recently sold, the trucking company specialized in loads between 1,000 and 30,000 pounds, which overlapped both the less-than-truckload and truckload markets.

One of the company’s employees, a truck driver for more than 40 years, was active in a national campaign, developed by the American Trucking Association, to promote safe driving.