America's third-largest trucking company is making a $100 million acquisition to grow its last-mile furniture-delivery options

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J.B. Hunt.

• J.B. Hunt, which is America's third-largest trucking company by revenue, announced today that it acquired Cory 1st Choice Home Delivery for $100 million.
• Cory specializes in furniture delivery.
• Online orders of furniture were forecasted to grow by 18.2% in 2018, hitting $50.32 billion overall.

J.B. Hunt, which is America's third-largest trucking company by revenue, announced today that it acquired Cory 1st Choice Home Delivery for $100 million. Cory, based in New Jersey, specializes in furniture delivery.

"This is a strategic investment that will further advance our final mile delivery capabilities of 'big and bulky' products to consumers and expand our expertise in furniture delivery," said John Roberts, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt, in a statement.

Last-mile delivery, powered by the growth of e-commerce, has been a boon to the trucking industry, particularly to companies like UPS and XPO Logistics that were already positioned in that field. In 2018, e-commerce grew by 16%, according to Peggy Dorf, a market analyst at DAT.

"The demand is constant and it's constantly growing," Dorf previously told Business Insider.

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Founded in 1934, Cory completes around two million deliveries annually through more than 1,000 carriers, contractors, and drivers.

And Cory's specialty demonstrates that J.B. Hunt is moving into a particularly fast-growing sector of e-commerce: furniture delivery. Online orders of furniture were forecasted to grow by 18.2% in 2018, hitting $50.32 billion overall. OneClickRetail said Amazon's furniture sales jumped by 51% year over year in 2017, eMarketer Retail reported.

In 2017, J.B. Hunt acquired Special Logistics Dedicated, another last-mile service, for $136 million. That company also specializes in "big and bulky" shipments.

Presently, XPO Logistics is the largest provider of last-mile, bulky goods shipments. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based company ranks right below J.B. Hunt in overall revenue.