Less-than-Truckload

During this podcast, Nightingale provided a detailed overview of the new Cowen/AFS Freight Index report and variuous market issues.

XPO opened up three of the 28 service center locations it acquired through an early December court-supervised auction, in which a dozen trucking companies bought properties that resold about three-fourths of Yellow’s properties for a total of just under $1.9 billion.

The new edition of the TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index, which was recently released by New York-based investment firm TD Cowen Inc. and Shreveport, La.-based 3PL and freight audit and payment company AFS Logistics LLC, was somewhat mixed, with less-than-truckload (LTL) and truckload rates steady, and parcel rates being impacted by fuel surcharge increases and various accessorial charges amid lower demand.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has won what the union calls “a major victory” in a breach of contract lawsuit against Yellow Corp. Unfortunately for about 24,000 Teamsters who lost their jobs when Yellow ceased operations last August, the victory arrives about nine months too late.

As key parts of this expansion, the company said that it has set up new locations in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Laredo, Texas, and also tapped 30-year logistics veteran Troy Ryley as President, Echo Mexico.

The liquidation of Yellow Corp., once the largest less-than-truckload (LTL) and the nation’s 13th-largest trucking company when it ceased operations last August, has continued to prove that Yellow’s assets were valuable even without operating as a functioning trucking company.  

ODFL reported that revenue per day rose 1.2% annually, driven by an increased in LTL revenue per hundredweight, which was slightly offset by a 3.0% decrease in LTL tons per day. The company added that the change in daily LTL tons was attributed to a 3.2% decrease in LTL weight per shipment that was partially offset by a 0.2% increase in LTL shipments per day.

Saia, the nation’s eighth-largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, enjoyed a blowout fourth quarter with earnings exceeding Wall Street analysts’ expectations in one of the first indications of a post-Yellow freight boom in the LTL sector.

Quarterly revenue, at $1.94 billion, was up 6% annually, and adjusted earnings per share fell 21.4% annually, to $0.77.

It’s hardly much consolation to its 30,000 or so former workers—or shippers left without Yellow’s reliable capacity for 49,000 less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments a day—but Yellow says it has repaid in full a $700 million loan approved for the struggling trucker in the final days of the Trump administration.

The state of the freight economy was a key theme at the SMC3 JumpStart 2024 conference held in Atlanta late last month. Avery Vise, vice president of trucking, for freight transportation consultancy FTR, offered up his views on the freight economy, at the moment, and where things could be headed.

The company’s expansion in Nashville is part of an ongoing effort to invest in its facility infrastructure and demonstrate its commitment to its customers, its associates and its future, adding that Averitt wants to be on the leading edge when it comes to technology, equipment and facilities.

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Taking steps to expand its national network, Downers Grove, Ill.-based Roadrunner, a national less-than-truckload (LTL) services provider, with a focus on long-haul metro-to-metro shipping, said today it has rolled out new LTL service offerings into Portland, Ore., as well as service into Toronto and Montreal via Detroit.