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Cause of Estes Express technology failure unclear

LTL carrier confirms ‘technical outage’ but does not disclose if company victim of cyberattack

Estes Express has suffered a major technology outage that has not been confirmed as cybersecurity. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Estes Express was suffering a significant technology outage Monday morning, though it was not immediately clear whether it was a cybersecurity breach or an internal failure of technology at the Richmond, Virginia-based LTL carrier.

In an email to FreightWaves following the submission of questions, a spokesman for privately held Estes said the company had “experienced a technical outage impacting a number of systems across our network. We are continuing core operations while we address this issue.”

However, the company did not disclose whether the outage was a cyberattack of an internal system. 

“At this point, we cannot share an estimated time when these systems will be online and apologize to anyone affected by this situation,” the company said in the statement. “Anyone needing to contact Estes can contact their account manager.”


The statement aligned with an Estes announcement of its technology problems released overnight Sunday via a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. That outlet can be reached via a cellphone using the X app and would not need the company’s technology to be posted.

Phone calls made by FreightWaves to the main Richmond headquarters were answered with a recorded message that the call “could not be completed as dialed.” Phone calls made to two Estes depots returned the same message.

Multiple attempts from different individuals at FreightWaves to access the company’s website resulted in a message that the site could not be reached.

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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.