![]() ![]() And from a macro-perspective, he adds that navigating this country’s aging infrastructure with its bottlenecks and delays is another. Bad news never gets better with age.”Īs for his biggest challenges, Orr says that “giving new drivers as much education as we can before they hit the road” is one of them. However, I would say the most important thing these days is communication, as it’s becoming more important to be proactive. “There’s not just one thing that makes a carrier good or great. “All of these things are key components to success today,” says Greg Orr, president of CFI, a major truckload company that’s a subsidiary of Montreal-based TFI International. So, what’s key to a great trucking company? Is it management? Is it organizational strategy? Improving operations? Hiring the best people? Over the next few pages we’ll examine what makes the Top 50 carriers stand out, what moves they’re making to avoid sharing NEMF’s fate, and how much shippers are going to have to pay to secure the capacity they need in the intensely competitive, $730 billion trucking market of 2019.Īs we found in our reporting, executives at our Top 50 are all staying busy with an ever-changing array of strategic challenges, whether it’s controlling costs in a tight driver environment, deciding the best geographic region to deploy drivers and rolling assets, or shrewdly negotiating with shippers over the most profitable blend of freight. ![]() At the end of the day it’s going to be the consumer, and there’s no free ride.” “All this costs money, and somebody has to pay the piper. “Drivers are a problem and nearly impossible to find, while the costs of equipment, terminals and home deliveries are all rising,” he says. Myron Shevell, chairman of the Shevell Group, parent company of NEMF and 10 subsidiaries that were part of the Chapter 11 filing, noted that it was not just one issue that drove his companies bankrupt. ** RESULTS ADJUSTED TO CLOSER RESEMBLE CALENDAR YEAR Top 25 Less-Than-Truckload Carriers: 2018 Revenues News of the NEMF bankruptcy continues to send chills throughout the trucking industry, not only in the high-cost region where NEMF once thrived but also in other regions. Its bankruptcy highlighted that in the dog-eat-dog world of trucking, nothing is assured. NEMF’s demise proved that the high costs of real estate, labor, and equipment can doom even well-managed carriers that are making significant expenditures in technology, drivers, and terminals. ![]() Duie Pyle moved swiftly to gain market share after the February bankruptcy of rival New England Motor Freight (NEMF). Hunt recently bought a rival to get into the e-commerce last-mile space, while scrappy northeast LTL player A. Nevertheless, Logistics Management’s exclusive Top 50 list is hardly static. Keep in mind that tonnage increased by 2.3% in January after falling 1% in December. However, he added that there’s evidence that in 2019 the industry and economy will moderate somewhat. Truck tonnage closed out 2018 on a 20 year high with an annual increase of 6.6%. The American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 6.6% last year - the largest annual gain since 1998 (10.1%) and significantly better than the 3.8% increase in 2017.īut that annual gain was realized despite a decrease of 4.3% last December as the economy pumped the breaks a bit.īob Costello, the chief economist for the ATA, called 2018 “a banner year for truck tonnage, marking the largest annual increase we’ve seen in two decades.” However, there’s growing evidence that this may be the last year of boom times for carriers. “I expect 2019 to be a good year with mid- to high-single-digit rate increases for both truckload and less-than-truckload,” he says. ![]() Satish Jindel, principal of SJ Consulting, is among those trucking analysts predicting that this year’s round of contractual rate negotiations will average between 4% and 8%. By all measures, the nation’s top truckload (TL) and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers should be able to squeeze one more solid year out of the nation’s longest economic expansion - and shippers certainly will notice because they’re the ones paying for it. ![]()
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