Courtesy / Epstein Commercial Real Estate
The Bangor location, still under construction, is expected to open by February.
Updated: December 25, 2022
Vermont courier to open second Maine location in Bangor
Courtesy / Vital Delivery Solutions
The Bangor location is expected to help open Vital Delivery Solutions’s northern Maine market. Seen here at the Vermont company’s Scarborough location is Colby Guilmette, the future operations manager for Bangor.
A courier service based in Williston, Vt., expanded to Maine in 2021 with the acquisition of a similar firm in South Portland, then moved into a larger facility in Scarborough.
Now Vital Delivery Solutions has leased 6,000 square feet of industrial space at 1173 Hammond St. in Bangor from New LLC for its second Maine location.
The tenant was represented by Cameron Foster of the Boulos Co. The landlord was represented by Molly Briggs of Epstein Commercial Real Estate
“There are a lot of great opportunities in Maine for servicing existing and new clients,” said the company’s CEO, Matt Kozlowski.
He continued, “We’ve got a good presence in southern Maine. But Maine’s a very large state and there are a lot of miles to cover. So our next strategic location, with new growth opportunities, is northern Maine.”
Vital Delivery Solutions provides same-day and next-day delivery serving markets such as health care, banking, office supplies and home residential.
It was founded in 1987 under the name Green Mountain Messenger, with one route, and later expanded to New Hampshire.
In 2021, the company purchased South Portland-based General Courier, then hired the Boulos Co. to help them find a larger Maine facility.
Earlier this year, it scored the lease of a 11,040-square-foot building at 107 Pleasant Hill Road in Scarborough. The property is prominently located in a well-established commercial and industrial corridor. The warehouse space features loading docks and an overhead drive-in door.
Today, it has 330 employees across the three states; 70 of them are in Scarborough and it’s expected that initial hiring in Bangor, which will be its sixth location across the three states, will be five to 10 people, including an operations manager and drivers. The fleet numbers 230 vehicles.
Revenues have grown each year over the past decade, said Kozlowski.
The majority of the company’s business is in health care. Major clients include the University of Vermont Health Network, the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Clinics in New Hampshire and Maine Medical Center in Portland. The work includes transporting lab specimens, medical supplies and pharmaceuticals between hospitals, clinics and labs.
During the pandemic, VDS had about a 15% increase in business.
“We were one of the few business that got busier and not slower,” he said. “There was huge demand for our services. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, public health labs heavily relied on us to pick up tests from public testing sites, from schools, camps, universities, clinics, hospitals, you name it. We operated behind the scenes. We were the ones moving a good portion of the COVID specimens.”
Although that segment has since subsided, the company continues to grow and health care remains its top clientele, he said.
Health care deliveries require special handling. The drivers, called medical couriers, carry lab specimens at different temperatures – room, refrigerated or frozen. They receive specialized training in aspects such as handling blood-borne pathogens and biohazardous specimens, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act patient privacy considerations.
In Bangor, VDS will occupy a new spec building that the landlord is still finishing up.
The industrial real estate market continues to be tight, particularly when in search of buildings with a loading dock and drive-in door, Kozlowski noted.
“We were fortunate to partner with the Boulos Co. to find this building and we’re looking to open in Bangor on Feb. 1, 2023,” he said.
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