National/Multi-Regional Less-than-truckload (LTL): Hitting their stride in a hot market

As our intrepid freight transportation correspondent John D. Schulz continues to report, the $36 billion less-than-truckload (LTL) market is clearly out of the “revival” stage it was negotiating through last year and has settled into what some are calling the best pricing and rate environment the market has ever seen.

The year started out with LTL freight volume overflowing, while carriers, hindered by a lack of qualified drivers and faced with new time constraints due to mandatory electronic logging devices, became increasingly more choosy in picking the best-yielding freight for their bottom lines.

While capacity is tight and rates may be heading skyward, Logistics Management readers proclaim that the following 11 carriers have had an outstanding year of service excellence.

In National LTL, FedEx Freight has posted the top weighted average for the second year in a row (45.76). In this year’s Multi-regional LTL category, Old Dominion Freight Line has once again put up the top weighted average (46.99).

And in the hotly contested Surface Package category, UPS has put up the top weighted average this year (48.05), just slightly ahead of FedEx (47.74).