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News Alert: Marten shows big jump in truckload OR, sluggish growth in TL revenue

John Kingston
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Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

Marten Transport, the first publicly traded truckload carrier to report third-quarter earnings, saw a significant improvement in operating ratio in its key divisions, though truckload revenue rose by a relatively small amount.

As the first company to report Thursday, Marten’s numbers might be looked at as a signal to how other trucking companies did in the third quarter.

Truckload revenue of $85 million was up only $2.1 million from the third quarter of 2019. That is a gain of 2.5%.

But dedicated revenue rose far more, jumping $9.7 million to $69 million for an increase of 16.3%.


Overall, operating income was up to $24.4 million from $20 million, a 21.8% gain. 

Total revenue of $216 million came in below the consensus forecast of $223 million, published by SeekingAlpha. But the earnings-per-share figure of 22 cents was 2 cents more than consensus.

FreightWaves will have additional information on this earnings release later on Thursday.


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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.