With plenty of wind in the sail
CretschmarCargo was founded in Düsseldorf in 1836 as a Rhine shipping company. With more than 182 years of history, the Rhinelanders are one of the oldest companies in the System Alliance. With a lot of wind in its sails, Cretschmar has defied all odds during this time. Over the decades, the transport specialists have expanded their product portfolio to include all other modes of transport and today focus primarily on logistics services.
Successful since 1836.
Tradition means experience and knowledge. But also solidarity and loyalty. Fast business is not what we want. We want satisfied customers in the long term. And for us, that means giving our best every day.
For our customers.
For our environment.
And for our employees.
This is how we ensure that tradition also means the future. Because only WE SHAPE THE FUTURE WITH EXPERIENCE.
With a keen sense for smart decisions, the then 25-year-old Leopold Wilhelm Cretschmar founded his steamship company for the Middle and Lower Rhine directly at an important transportation hub in the port of Düsseldorf. This is where the success story of the first Düsseldorf-based public limited company began. Its founder led the company into a stable future thanks to groundbreaking decisions. The company remained on a smart course in the second generation too, deploying its own ships from 1880 and founding the first trade fair forwarding company in Düsseldorf in 1902. And with the commissioning of the first privately operated coal tipper in 1909, Cretschmar once again proved its foresight.
The First World War put an abrupt halt to the company’s extremely positive development. Faced with economic difficulties, the company was sold to Arthur Espey in 1931, who had already put Cretschmar back on the road to success for the company’s 100th anniversary in 1936. The Second World War also proved to be a major turning point, bringing the company’s entire development to a standstill for almost two decades. It was only in the post-war period that Espey and his team were able to regain a foothold by distributing care packages. During the economic miracle, Cretschmar then increasingly focused on overland transportation. Air freight transportation was also taken up at that time.
The Rhinelanders then took the step beyond Germany’s borders in 1968 with the establishment of four stores in Spain. The operation of further companies in Ludwigsburg (later Freiberg am Neckar), Hamburg and Stuttgart later put the German-wide business on a broader footing. L.W. Cretschmar was therefore well prepared in the mid-1980s when customers increasingly demanded complete logistics services from the freight forwarder. Since then, the North Rhine-Westphalian service provider has developed into a specialist for contract logistics, which is in particularly high demand from (major) customers in the chemical industry.
CretschmarCargo discovered domestic general cargo transport relatively late. It was one of the first transport service providers to introduce regular direct transports to East Germany soon after reunification and established a branch in Leipzig as early as 1990. Almost overwhelmed by the volume of consignments, CretschmarCargo then gradually developed from an East Germany specialist in North Rhine-Westphalia to a classic general cargo forwarder. As one of the few traditional companies in the System Alliance group of shareholders, CretschmarCargo was therefore the only member of Fortra’s predecessor organizations.
The opening of the new joint forwarding platform for national and European system transports in Düsseldorf in 2011 was an investment of the greatest strategic importance and future orientation. The construction of the new overnight express branch, also located in Düsseldorf, was also a major step towards boosting competitiveness. With the founding of L.W. Cretschmar Süd by Oliver Rüter as a shareholder of L.W. Cretschmar GmbH & Co. KG in 2016, additional attention was paid to strengthening activities in Spain and Southern Europe.
As a strategic addition, the establishment of the Wuppertal branch as the fourth German location of L.W. Cretschmar Süd in 2020 further expanded the range of services in the Rhine-Ruhr region with a focus on selected southern European markets.
