Updated:
Central Pennsylvania Teamsters
The Central Pennsylvania Teamsters Pension Fund represents a specific and increasingly prevalent breed of multiemployer plan: sharply concentrated,...
Central Pennsylvania Teamsters
The Central Pennsylvania Teamsters Pension Fund represents a specific and increasingly prevalent breed of multiemployer plan: sharply concentrated, methodically counter-cyclical, and tightly aligned with the members whose retirement it secures. Governed by a Board of Trustees chaired by William M. Shappell and administered by Joseph J. Samolewicz, the fund draws contributions from a coalition of participating locals that includes Teamsters Local 776, Local 429, Local 771, Local 773, Local 764, Local 229, and Local 401. The fund office operates from a commercial property at 1055 Spring Street in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, alongside a scholarship vehicle for members' families. The fund's strategy, in practice, looks less like a traditional 60/40 pension allocation and more like a specialist private-equity shop. Its dominant investment posture is secondaries — purchasing LP interests in existing private-market funds from other investors who need liquidity before the fund's term ends. This builds the portfolio across mature, income-generating assets in North America and beyond while typically capturing discounts to net asset value. The asset-class mix is disproportionately weighted to private-equity secondaries, with likely exposure to infrastructure, private credit, and real estate secondaries as the underlying fund portfolio diversifies. The fund's structure leans heavily on fund commitments, buying into seasoned vehicles rather than direct co-investments or SPVs. The fund's scale and total deployment levels are not publicly disclosed, a common feature among Taft-Hartley plans that report via statutory filings rather than press releases. Its professional affiliations reflect a disciplined governance culture: membership in the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP), the primary educational organization for Taft-Hartley trustees, and the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP), which advocates for the multiemployer system. These connections suggest a board that actively adjusts its fiduciary toolkit as regulatory and market conditions shift. What distinguishes this fund structurally is the single-strategy saturation — a move that would trigger diversification alarms in most pension committees but here reflects a bet that the secondaries market's structural inefficiency is large enough to absorb the entire corpus. Unlike peers that sprinkle 5–10% into alternatives, this fund appears to have rebuilt its investment policy statement around the liquidity premium in private markets. The governance architecture — a Taft-Hartley board with equal union and employer trustees — means every allocation decision runs through a fiduciary lens calibrated for the members of participating locals like 771 and 773, not for institutional marketing narratives.
General information
Firm type
Pension Fund
Year founded
1955
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Wyomissing
Corporate office
1055 Spring Street, Wyomissing, PA 19610, United States
Principals
William M. Shappell
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Joseph J. Samolewicz
Fund Administrator
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at the Central Pennsylvania Teamsters Pension Fund?
Investment decisions are overseen by the Board of Trustees, chaired by William M. Shappell. The board operates under Taft-Hartley governance rules, which require equal representation from union and contributing employer trustees. Day-to-day fund administration is handled by Joseph J. Samolewicz. The board's membership in the IFEBP and NCCMP indicates regular engagement with fiduciary best practices and multiemployer regulatory developments.
How does the fund source its secondaries deal flow?
As a Taft-Hartley plan with a concentrated secondaries mandate, the fund likely sources through a combination of dedicated secondaries advisors, direct GP relationships built over multiple fund commitments, and intermediaries that run auction processes for LP stakes. The IFEBP network also provides a peer channel where multiemployer plan trustees exchange manager references and sourcing contacts. No proprietary origination channel has been publicly described.
Is this a single-employer pension fund or a multiemployer plan?
It is a multiemployer Taft-Hartley pension plan, drawing contributions from multiple Teamsters local unions across Pennsylvania. Participating locals include Teamsters 776, 429, 771, 773, 764, 229, and 401. Under Taft-Hartley rules, the board comprises an equal number of union and employer trustees, and the plan is covered by the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act framework.
Does the fund participate in fund commitments or direct deals?
The fund's strategy is built around secondaries, which means it purchases existing LP fund commitments from other investors rather than making primary commitments to blind-pool funds. Whether it also purchases direct secondary portfolios of company stakes alongside fund interests has not been publicly detailed. The structure is almost certainly fund-of-funds in nature, not direct co-investment or SPV-driven.
What is the fund's relationship with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters?
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the parent labor organization under whose umbrella the participating locals operate. The pension fund is an independent legal entity governed by its own board of trustees and is not managed by the IBT itself. The fund's beneficiaries are members of the named Pennsylvania locals, and contribution levels are bargained in each local's collective bargaining agreements.
Which sectors or asset classes does the fund explicitly avoid?
No publicly available documentation outlines explicit avoidance screens. Given the secondaries concentration, the fund is indirectly exposed to whatever assets the underlying GPs hold. The board's fiduciary duty to Pennsylvania Teamsters members likely results in avoidance of concentrated illiquid bets that would impair its ability to pay benefits, but no formal exclusions list has been published.
How is the Central Pennsylvania Teamsters Scholarship Fund related to the pension fund?
The scholarship fund operates from the same Wyomissing, Pennsylvania office at 1055 Spring Street and provides educational grants to dependents of plan participants. It is a separate legal vehicle from the pension fund, likely structured as a charitable trust with its own governance. The two share administrative infrastructure, and the scholarship fund acts as a soft-benefit enhancement for member families without drawing on pension assets.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
Need institutional-grade insight on pension funds?
Altss delivers:
Prefer a guided tour?
We’ll walk you through: