PHOENIX – If there was a freight market bull at the annual meeting of the Truckload Carriers Association, that person was keeping pretty quiet.
Conversations from the stage, at receptions and at meals had a consistent theme: Can you believe we’re still talking about this freight recession? In 2025? Didn’t we say at this meeting last year that things would be better by the end of 2024?
At the Large Carrier panel, Dave Williams, senior vice president of equipment and government relations at...
Knight-Swift Transportation announced Friday that Doug Col, former chief financial officer at less-than-truckload carrier Saia, joined its board of directors effective Thursday.
Col retired from Saia in May after 10 years of service. He joined in 2014 as vice president and treasurer and was tapped to be CFO in 2020.
Col joins Knight-Swift (NYSE: KNX) as it looks to add a major presence in the Northeast – the last significant hole in what will become a national LTL footprint.
He was with Saia (NASDA...
Citi’s transportation analysts have released a report suggesting that the recent sell-off in trucking stocks may be overblown, driven by investors’ overreactions to sharp declines in trucking spot rates. The report highlights key factors and trends shaping the sector.
Truckload spot rates have plummeted in early 2025, erasing gains from late 2024. While this drop partly reflects seasonal norms, its magnitude has exceeded investor expectations, fueled by excess capacity and soft demand in the...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/trucking-stocks-tumble-but-citi-sees-opportunity-in-chaos
The U.S. truckload market ratcheted tighter into the beginning of this week, with closing spreads between contract and spot rates and multiple major trucking markets rejecting more than 7% of outbound shipments. However, there’s still no clear ‘melt-up’ or cascade toward meaningfully higher rates compared to conditions during the holiday retail peak season.
(The Outbound Tender Reject Index measures the percentage of electronically tendered truckload shipments rejected by carriers and serves as...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/the-trucking-market-is-still-headed-in-the-right-direction
El mercado de la carga de camiones de EE. UU. Contrató más estricto a principios de esta semana, con diferenciales de cierre entre las tasas de contrato y las spot y múltiples mercados de camiones múltiples que rechazan más del 7% de los envíos salientes. Sin embargo, todavía no hay un claro...
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Truck Leasing Task Force (TLTF) delivered a scathing report on lease-purchase (LP) programs managed by motor carriers in the trucking industry. The TLTF’s findings described the programs as tools of “fraud and driver...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/truck-leasing-task-force-blasts-lease-purchase-programs
Management from Knight-Swift Transportation acknowledged improving data points over the past few weeks but said it’s still too soon to say the truckload market has seen a meaningful positive inflection.
The Phoenix-based company reported adjusted earnings per share of 36 cents for the fourth quarter Wednesday after the market closed. The result was at the high end of management’s guidance range of 32 to 36 cents and 3 cents better than the consensus estimate.
Knight-Swift (NYSE: KNX) reiterated...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/costs-from-acquisitions-rapid-growth-weigh-on-knight-swifts-q4
For the folks at Morgan Stanley, Q4 earnings season has the potential to reveal actual progress and results for freight transportation companies, according to a research report released on Monday. But the management teams themselves may not speak much of it. Ravi Shanker, equity analyst with Morgan Stanley, writes, “While companies are likely to talk down 1Q on seasonality, we see data momentum...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/dueling-narratives-ahead-of-q4-transportation-earnings
The truckload market enters 2025 showing signs of stabilization after nearly three years of freight recession. While earnings remain depressed across the sector, Susquehanna analyst Bascome Majors sees reasons for optimism that the industry is poised for recovery over the next two years. In a Friday client note, Majors writes that “tangible signs of progress are still incremental – a holiday peak with seasonal lifts in tender rejection rates and slightly super-seasonal dry van spot rates,...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-susquehanna-is-getting-bullish-on-trucking
A slowdown in trucking M&A was met by interest rate cuts for the first time in more than four years in 2024. The anticipation of lower lending rates fostered more constructive transaction dialogues during the year, but deal count across the industry was still off 5% from 2023, according to data compiled by the research team at Left Lane Associates.
The supply chain M&A advisory firm said there is noise in the number as some deals were paused until after the election, which pushed closings into...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/2024s-most-notable-trucking-deals