About Us

Carstensen and Sons Trucking, Inc. was co-founded in 1981 by Al & Gail Carstensen and incorporated in 1983. Al & Gail decided to quit their corporate jobs and with just one tractor-trailer started out hauling cement powder to Gail’s father’s ready mix plant in Granite Falls, MN. By word of mouth alone, Al’s reputation quickly grew throughout the cement industry and soon found himself branching out for other customers transporting a variety of products.

Al & Gail called Hastings, MN home where they went on to raise six children, four boys and two girls, while running their business. All four of the boys started working at a young age washing tractors, greasing trucks, and changing oil.  Two of the boys went to school to obtain their diesel technician degrees and are both still actively involved in the trucking industry. While Al is mostly retired now, he can still be found on occasion driving truck and assisting in the shop while Gail continues to help in the office as needed. One of the boys, Matt, is now the president and under his continued leadership, we have grown to over 30 trucks, 60+ trailers, and 5 mobile PIG storage units.  As the industry needs kept expanding, in 2018 we signed on our first owner operator and now currently partner with eight well-qualified owner operators that share our same commitments and visions.

Here at Carstensen and Sons Trucking, our main focus has always been on hauling dry bulk commodities (how Al started and built the company) including cement powder, fly ash, lime, sand, salt, urea and other bulk animal feed ingredients using pneumatic trailers. In addition to the pneumatic trailers, we do have a small fleet of van and flatbed trailers that assist in specialized coverage for our customers where needed. With continued growth over the years, we have been able to evolve where and when needed. In September of 2016, we obtained our brokerage authority which allows us to ensure that we can provide coverage for any job size, not just limiting coverage to the trucks within our fleet. As our fleet size was growing, so did the need to expand our repair shop and mechanical services offered. We began partnering with brands such as Pittsburgh Power, Max Mileage, and MD Alignment to ensure our trucks were running as efficiently, and profitably, as possible. In 2020 we started construction on a new facility in Cannon Falls, MN that allowed us additional space to open our repair shop to the public. We take pride in making sure our equipment is always running in top shape and are now able to offer those same great services to our customers. Some of the services offered include axel alignments and diesel engine cleaning (see links below or Shop Services tab for more detailed information), tire changes, DOT inspections, oil changes through full services. We have three full-time mechanics on staff, all of which are MN DOT certified. The new facility also houses a full-service truck, trailer & tank wash, Cannon Custom Tank Wash, that is open to the public and offers a wide array of custom wash options. Please visit https://cannoncustomtankwash.com/ or check them out on Facebook at Cannon Custom Tank Wash.