The start of our company was a long time ago, it all began around 1900.

My great-grandfather Marten Sjoerds de Vries founded several companies. He was born in 1884 and in 1900 he began as a worker at Vrachtrijder (Transport Company) van Dijk. Around 1910 he took the risk of becoming an entrepreneur himself, he bought a horse and plough and started as a contractor. Through the years his company grew and he had to hire several employees. From his marriage in 1908 with Jantsje de Vries, 7 children were born (4 sons and 3 daughters). One of these sons was Jelle de Vries (my great-grandfather).

As in most family companies, as the children became older, different views occurred about how to run the family business. Due to this reason, the activities were divided among the children: Sep continued as a farmer, Sjoerd arranged the cattle transport and everything around it; Willem started buying, repairing, and then reselling cars (his sons Marten and Piet still run the garage Volvo Dealer M.S. de Vries), my father Jelle continued with the transport and agricultural service supply company. It was probably around 1960 when this separation took place.

One of the 5 children (3 sons and 2 daughters) from the marriage between Jelle and Minke was Geert de Vries, my father. At first, he worked for my grandfather in the company; the company had significantly grown into a large agricultural service supply agency/transport company with about 20 employees. Another separation took place in the early 70’s, also due to different ideas about how to do business.

From then on, my father would be running the transport company and Sjoerd de Vries took over the roughage business. This branch of the company is still active as Jelle de Vries B.V. From the marriage in 1962 between Geert de Vries and Griet Larooi, 5 children were born, Jelle, Johannes, Jeltje, Minke, and Theo. From these children, 3 sons are still active in the transport business.

Jelle is the owner of International Transport de Vries B.V. with a car fleet of 6 vehicles, established in 1987, owner of Transport mediation de Vries Beetgum B.V. established in 1998.
Johannes is a planner at de Vries Road & Rail in Grouw.
Theo is the owner of Theo de Vries Transport B.V. with a car fleet of 9 vehicles, established in 1992 and also active as a planner at Transport mediation de Vries Beetgum.

As you can see from the story above, the transport world and everything around it runs in our family. From our history it shows that the transport world accompanies family De Vries way back to its roots.

Jelle de Vries