There will be a big Saia logo traveling at a high rate of speed before thousands soon, but it won’t be delivering any freight.
The less-than-truckload carrier has signed on to be the primary sponsor of seven NASCAR Cup races this season. The deal with Joe Gibbs Racing will place the Saia (NASDAQ: SAIA) logo as the most prominent signage on the car driven by Gibbs’ grandson, Ty Gibbs. Joe Gibbs is the legendary football coach who led the then-Washington Redskins (now Commanders) to three Super Bowl victories in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Ray Ramu, executive vice president and chief customer officer at Saia LTL Freight, said the sponsorship is almost an exclamation point to a process that by 2024 had transformed Saia from a 12-state LTL carrier when he joined 27 years ago to one that now has facilities in all the Lower 48 states.
The initial Southern footprint has the company well known in those areas, Ramu said. But Johns Creek, Georgia-based Saia is seeking greater exposure in the rest of the country.
“It’s really a branding opportunity for us to get people more familiar with who we are as a company,” Ramu said in an interview with FreightWaves.
But it isn’t just to market Saia as a supplier of freight services to existing or potential customers, he said.
First, there’s an internal benefit, Ramu said: “We have a lot of drivers that like NASCAR. And a lot of our customers are into NASCAR as well.”
The NASCAR tie is positive for that reason, Ramu said. “But it’s really about introducing people to the brand side,” he added.
While there will be a Saia brand presence on every NASCAR Cup race starting this season, Saia will be the primary sponsor at seven events, with its logo taking up most of the side of the car.
Those races and their dates will be at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Feb. 23; Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on April 27; Texas Motor Speedway a week later on May 4; the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina on May 18; Sonoma Raceway in California on July 13; Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 27; and Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Oct. 12.
Ty Gibbs’ car carries the number 54.
Ramu said those markets are where the company “has a pretty good presence.” But the Indianapolis race, which is reasonably close to Chicago, puts the Saia logo in a region “where we have an incredible number of facilities.
“So the opportunity to continue to win share – getting people comfortable with the name, who we are, what we do as an organization – this is one of the key reasons we made the investment,” Ramu said.
Saia is not disclosing the size of the investment with Joe Gibbs Racing. Negotiations to close the deal didn’t take long, Ramu said, lasting only 2 1/2 to three months.
Saia approached Joe Gibbs Racing about the sponsorship, Ramu said. It was part of a broader marketing plan in which Saia was looking at a corporate sponsorship in several different platforms, mostly sports, “and we vetted them out. We felt like this gave us the broadest reach over an extended period of time.”
The Saia executive ticked off the various benefits that the carrier sees from the relationship, beyond just brand marketing.
Tie-ins with other members of the group of sponsors backing Joe Gibbs Racing may be possible; SiriusXM radio is one example.
Hospitality at NASCAR races for existing or potential Saia customers is also a benefit of the relationship, Ramu noted.
But in addition, there’s a “culture play,” as he called it, for the internal workings at Saia.
“When you have employees who get to see their company’s car out on the track, it’s their logo, the same one that’s on the tractor they drive or the trailer they’re loading off the platform every night. It becomes kind of a symbol of, ‘Look, that’s my car,’” he said.
The Cup series is the premier division of NASCAR, featuring races such as the Daytona 500, which kicks off the season Feb. 16. The NASCAR “minor league” is the Xfinity Series, which Saia is not sponsoring. Joe Gibbs teams have won four Daytona 500 races, considered the most prestigious in the NASCAR series.
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