Tyler Watson (right) is manager of the Old Dominion Freight Lines service center in Bowling Green, and Doug Benfield is the solutions specialist.

Old Dominion Freight Lines, one of the fastest-growing trucking companies in the country, is expanding its presence in southcentral Kentucky.

The Thomasville, N.C.-based company has opened a new service center on Scotty’s Way in northern Warren County, near Interstate 65 and the Kentucky Transpark. The 43-bay facility is one of five service centers the company opened during the second quarter of the year.

The $6.7 million, 32,000-square-foot Bowling Green service center, which had its grand opening Wednesday, will help the company improve service to customers who had been served by a center in the Nashville area. Its 33 employees will help Old Dominion provide faster delivery for customers in an area that includes Bowling Green, Scottsville, Glasgow and Hopkinsville.

“Nashville has been a strong growth area for us,” said Dave Bates, Old Dominion’s senior vice president of operations. “We used to be 80 miles away from some of these customers. Now we may be only five miles away.”

Old Dominion, which also opened service centers in Wyoming, Florida, Utah and West Virginia recently, is now up to 231 locations nationwide as it continues on a steep growth curve. The company reported revenue of $925 million for the first quarter of 2018, up more than 22 percent over the same quarter last year. Its net income of $109.3 million for the first quarter represents a 66 percent increase over 2017’s first quarter.

The company has about 22,000 employees nationwide and has made the list of fastest-growing trucking companies compiled by the Journal of Commerce.

Having a presence in the area will help Old Dominion improve the transportation services it provides to such southcentral Kentucky customers as Dollar General and Walmart, according to Craig Evans, the company’s regional vice president for the Midwest South region.

“We can make our pickups faster and improve service and response times,” Evans said.

And that, says Bowling Green service center Manager Tyler Watson, should translate into continued growth.

“With this center here, we know our market share is going to continue to grow,” said Watson, who pointed out that the service center was built to allow for easy expansion on its 10-acre site.

“The goal of our employees is to grow,” Watson said. “They love the fact that we can add another 32 doors at this location.”

Adding doors will mean adding drivers and other support workers, Evans said.

“There’s a lot of expansion in the company right now,” he said. “We have 33 employees here now, but I see that growing.”

Even the nationwide driver shortage isn’t dampening the growth prospects for Old Dominion, which started in 1934 with a single truck.

“There is a driver shortage nationally,” said Bates, who estimated that Old Dominion’s drivers earn $60,000 or more per year. “We started an in-house driving school to address that. We have schools in Nashville and Indianapolis. That’s one of the things we’re doing to combat the driver shortage.”

The Bowling Green service center is the fourth in Kentucky for Old Dominion, which has locations in Louisville, Lexington and Paducah.