Business

Universal Logistics Holdings reported $415.2 million in operating revenue during the first quarter.

The biggest changes Bed Bath & Beyond must make are in the supply chain, which has been referred to as “noncompetitive” by management.

Forward Air provided some clarity on longer-term margin expectations during a Friday conference call with analysts. The company beat first-quarter expectations and its new guidance came in much better than expected.

Pennsylvania’s move to scrap fuel taxes could change how states generate revenue to pay for road projects.

Olsavsky says the one-day delivery service needs to get on top of burgeoning demand and warehouse space shortages.

Forward Air reported first-quarter earnings results and issued second-quarter guidance that were both ahead of expectations.

Provider of fuel payment processing for fleets reported 5% revenue decline in first quarter

The truckload carrier’s OR went from in excess of 100% to 95.8%.

Schneider National sees several favorable catalysts through the remainder of 2021 that are supportive of its guidance raise. Finding equipment and drivers will be the challenge.

Schneider National’s first quarter comes in ahead of analysts’ expectations and the company raises its full-year outlook by 8% at the midpoint of the range.

Forward Air announced it has entered an agreement to acquire expedited transportation and less-than-truckload provider J&P Hall Express.

Ford and GM say the chip shortage could cost the automakers more than $1 billion in earnings during 2021.

Getting around the B prong of the ABC test is going to be complicated for companies trying to use independent owner-operators in California.

Werner Enterprises reported a first-quarter record for operating income Wednesday after the close. Revenue-per-mile guidance in its one-way segment moved higher.

Waggoner delivered record EPS in a difficult environment.

In what is expected to be its final earnings report as a stand-alone company, Grubhub reported 52% growth in revenue, but said restaurant fee caps hurt its bottom line, resulting in a quarterly loss.

Norfolk Southern aims to add longer trains, improve car velocity and provide more technological tools for customers and for safety inspections, with an eye toward future competition with autonomous trucks.

Ryder is a major supplier of used trucks to the market, and its numbers showed a healthy second sales demand in the quarter.

Despite supply chain constraints, Tier 1 driveline supplier Dana beat analyst expectations for Q1 and raised full-year estimates.

The CEO of TFI International suggests the Canadian firm is looking to grow its relationship with UPS beyond its $800 million acquisition of UPS Freight.

Less-than-truckload carrier Saia reported first-quarter earnings ahead of expectations and guided for second-quarter results to outpace normal seasonality.

The California Trucking Association lawsuit was able to hold off the law in the state’s trucking industry for 16 months, but the injunction it won has been overturned.

Within maritime logistics circles, an effort is underway to update the technology the industry relies on to take advantage of recent advancements in hardware and software technology.

The CEO of Covenant, while reviewing a strong quarter for the truckload carrier, gives his perspective on the labor market the company faces.

First-quarter operating ratio was 61.5%, compared with an adjusted operating ratio of 63.7% in the first quarter of 2020.

Less-than-truckload carrier Saia reports a big year-over-year increase in earnings during the first quarter even as weather negatively impacted one-third of its network.

The brokerage will pour money into new tech, new modes and new people.

West Coast congestion could last into the fall as retailers face stockouts on essential goods, says ocean carrier Matson.

Robinson highlighted improving productivity metrics.

TFI International reports a 17% increase in operating income during the first quarter as the Canadian trucking and logistics firm gets a strong start to 2021.

PACCAR puts up strong Q1 numbers, including record parts sales that suggest the new truck backlog is boosting aftermarket sales.

The move comes as the company reports terrific first-quarter results and its shares soar.

Less-than-truckload carrier Yellow announced it is taking delivery of the next wave of equipment, which has been facilitated by the CARES Act loan it received in 2020.

As TriumphPay gets set to bring in HubTran, a business with lots of companies may become one with far fewer firms.

CN outlined some scenarios in which a merged railway can compete with long-haul trucking.

GDC Technics has laid off 223 workers and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after losing a Boeing contract.

Autonomous software from Plus applied to the Cummins Westport natural gas engine could pair self-driving with negative net-zero carbon footprint.

DSV Panalpina announced Tuesday it plans to acquire the logistics arm of Agility Public Warehousing for $4.1 billion. The deal is expected to turn the transportation and logistics company into a top 3 forwarder globally.

Revenue jumps by double digits across the board; pension gains account for about half of EPS increase.

First-quarter earnings reports from truckload carriers highlight a booming freight market. A strong consumer, tight truck capacity and elevated rates appear the likely dynamics for the remainder of the year.

Tesla is focusing on making more cars, securing battery cells and finishing gigafactories in Texas and Germany. The Semi is again in the background.

Covenant’s overall OR improved by 620 bps from the first quarter of 2020, a significant gain.

A California freight forwarder filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week, collectively owing transportation and logistics companies more than $884,000.

Canadian railway CN reported net profit of CA$974 million in the first quarter of 2021, a 3.7% decline from the first quarter of 2020.

Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp., has agreed to acquire the self-driving vehicle business Level 5 from Lyft.

“Both Hapag-Lloyd and USMX were well aware that the work in question would have been handled by ILA members” if the vessel had gone to another port, the International Longshoremen’s Association lawsuit asserts.

GDC Technics is permanently closing its San Antonio plant where most of the work on the Air Force One planes were done.

Several trucking and logistics companies are collectively owed hundreds of thousands of dollars after an Indiana brokerage ceased operations and filed Chapter 7.

The best-in-class retailers are aggressively pursuing logistical control over their products while trying to avoid patchwork responses to final-mile delivery.

Congress is considering several options to keep the Highway Trust Fund afloat.

Buyers and suppliers have turned to supply chain finance to manage liquidity needs for decades. However, supplier finance programs have seen increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies, which seek greater disclosure.

Daimler Truck AG, soon to be a stand-alone business, showed a modest recovery from the pandemic-impacted year-ago first quarter.

Canadian electric truck and bus manufacturer Lion Electric is poised to go public after Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. shareholders approve SPAC merger.

Variant is a company within a company that is being touted as the future of U.S. Xpress.

Roni Rae Brady, the former chief judge for the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council, was sentenced to six months in prison for a scam that targeted truckers.

New guidance from the Biden administration includes the trucking industry as part of its 500,000-charging station rollout.

The company’s revenue rose but operating margins are higher; Variant targets are being met and revenue is 11.8% of total truckload.

The CEO of one of Canada’s largest trucking companies, Mullen Group, says the country’s freight market will bounce back after COVID-19 is under control.

The Surface Transportation Board will need to scrutinize a proposed merger between Kansas City Southern and either Canadian Pacific or CN to ensure it doesn’t hurt the operations of competing railroads, Union Pacific’s head said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

Old Dominion Freight Line set a first-quarter record even with adverse weather conditions. The second quarter is shaping up to produce a new all-time company record.

Aaron Graft has been assuring users HubTran’s open loop system will not be giving Triumph’s factoring business an unfair advantage

In 2020, Amazon nearly doubled: its workforce, its number of facilities and its logistics square footage. In 2021, it plans to double its truckload fleet.

Sweden’s Volvo AB reported a record operating margin in Q1 following a warning of up to a month of downtime due to microchip shortages.

You can’t reduce carbon emissions without measuring them first. C.H. Robinson experts discuss the company’s carbon measurement technology.

SmartHop has tapped Amy Liu, formerly of Uber Elevate, as chief of staff and to help build out its New York office. The company also announced the opening of an office in Bogota, Colombia.

Transfix considers the relationships at stake for a carrier or shipper in order to build the right tech solution.

Prosecutors allege Oumar Sissoko, 59, of Temecula, California, who claimed to own a pothole repair company called Road Doctor California LLC, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury items after receiving $7.25 million in PPP loan funds.

FreightWaves introduces FreightWaves Carbon Intelligence. Learn more here!

A 4% drop in operating revenue contributed to a 9% decline in net income for Union Pacific’s first quarter.

Old Dominion Freight Line announced its best first-quarter result in company history on Thursday. Improved density and yields led to a 76.1% operating ratio, 530 basis points better year-over-year.

For now, Canadian Pacific is not planning to take part in a bidding war with rival CN to acquire Kansas City Southern, saying that its offer is more likely to meet regulators’ litmus test for mergers.

P.A.M. Transportation Services posted a profit in the first quarter of 2021. The bulk of the improvement came on the nonoperating line.

Truck repairs and parts sales covered all the cost of running Rush Enterprises’ dealership network in Q1 as year-over-year profits doubled.

Broker Landstar System blew out analysts’ expectations for the first quarter. The company’s earnings almost doubled from the year-ago quarter, which wasn’t materially impacted by COVID. Landstar’s new guidance calls for more of the same.

The bank’s book of business grew at a pace that far exceeded the additional business that came with its acquisition of Covenant’s factoring operation

Canadian Pacific’s revenue for the first quarter of 2021 dipped 4% to CA$1.96 billion.

Will the oil majors make the transition to become dominant producers of renewable energy and other climate change technology, or will new entrants supplant them?

Heartland Express reported a slight miss on first-quarter earnings expectations Wednesday. The carrier pointed to relative strength in March as it exited the quarter, noting that driver pay will need to be raised again.

The Defense Department lawsuit from 2018 is continuing even as the federal government has taken a stake in the LTL carrier.

CSX has capacity on its network, space on its trains and the workforce and locomotives it needs to handle an anticipated growth in service needs in 2021, according to company executives.

Knight-Swift Transportation posted a large headline earnings beat in the first quarter but it was less impressive by comparison when excluding nonoperating income. The company now sees over-the-road contract rates increasing in the mid-teen percentage range during 2021.

It is difficult to measure the precise size of the impact on retail fuel prices, but there are signs it is in the double digits.

CSX’s first-quarter net income fell 8% to $706 million from $770 million a year ago.

Clean Energy Fuels will provide the renewable natural gas. Amazon could end up owning part of the company.

A merged CN and Kansas City Southern would compete against long-haul trucking for north-south intermodal opportunities, CN said Tuesday.

Samsara data shows cloud-based digitization is expanding beyond vehicle telematics and into other operational areas like site security and equipment monitoring.

The Salesforce Sustainability Cloud on Tuesday added a scope 3 emissions hub that allows companies to track upstream emissions from business travel, purchased goods and employee commutes.

United performed worse in the first quarter than some analysts expected, but the consumer mood has shifted as the economy reopens and United says it can get to breakeven this year on a pretax basis.

Jacobs says 10% U.S. GDP growth is not out of the question in 2021.

Logistics warehouse provider Prologis sees the real estate market tightening further in 2021. Rents are expected to step higher by mid-single digits even as more capacity comes online.

Arguments in the appeal of the injunction keeping AB5 as California law were made in September; the industry still awaits the final word.

Chain.io plans to use the $5 million to fill a number of positions in sales, engineering, customer success and more.

Logistics warehouse provider Prologis reports a beat-and-raise quarter. The company is forecasting occupancy to continue to tick higher even as new properties come online.

One significant difference from traditional hedging: There is no chance of hedging losses, just upfront fees instead.

At a recent hearing, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard loud and clear that the trucking industry should not serve as the guinea pig for any seismic change in how the United States funds infrastructure, including a vehicle miles traveled tax.

Kansas City Southern expects to maintain its financial targets for 2021 on a recovering economy and an anticipated volume rebound. It declined to comment on post-merger operational changes.

Truck Talk is a weekly newsletter from FreightWaves that adds perspective and context to happenings in the trucking industry.

Also on this week’s podcast: Conflicting info about the US oil upstream that might actually be in sync.

project44 and FourKites are the only ‘Leaders’ in the space.

Kansas City Southern’s net income for the first quarter of 2021 rose 0.7% despite a 4% decline in revenue and a 1% drop in carload volumes.