Knight-Swift Transportation said it is focused on reducing costs throughout the organization. That includes culling trailer counts, as well as tractor counts in some areas, to improve asset utilization. It is prioritizing investment dollars toward the expansion of its less-than-truckload business in the near-term. Like many in the truckload arena, the company was busy adding trailing equipment in recent years to provide customers flexibility through trailer pools and to build out a power-only brokerage operation. It ended last year with more than 96,000 trailers. It entered the pandemic with ..read more

In what has been a difficult quarter for trucking companies, both truckload and to a lesser degree LTL, Covenant Logistics reported first-quarter operating earnings that held up relatively well. Covenant’s adjusted earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis came in at 84 cents per share, down from 93 cents per share a year ago. According to SeekingAlpha, that figure beat the consensus forecast by 4 cents per share. But adjusted operating income, the most basic profitability measure, rose to $14.8 million from $12.62 million a year ago.  That can be seen in the fact that Covenant’s operating ..read more

WASHINGTON — After years of complaints from truckers, brokers and insurance companies, federal regulators are standing up a team specifically to deal with rampant fraud in the trucking industry. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Registration Fraud Team will work in the agency’s registration office to focus solely on assisting those who have been victims of registration fraud at the agency as well as identifying measures to help prevent it. “It’s a small team that doesn’t exist now, but we think it will go a long way towards helping the industry,” said Ken Riddle, director of F ..read more

This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ 3PL Summit on Wednesday. FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Leveraging Technology for Fleet Growth: What Smaller Fleets Need and What Can Be Provided DETAILS: Casey Monahan, vice president of digital sales at LoadSmart, talks with FreightWaves’ Grace Sharkey about what his company’s TMS systems can provide and what today’s growing fleets need as technology advances. KEY QUOTES FROM MONAHAN: “Our carriers are the ones where AI is reading their trucks as they come into the yards and gates, so I really view them, especially small carriers, as like the lifeblood o ..read more

The elephant in the room on the Norfolk Southern earnings call made only a brief appearance. But it will be returning in about two weeks. There were no surprises in the first-quarter earnings report, as the Class 1 railroad (NYSE: NSC) had issued a preliminary report earlier in the month. The final numbers, showing a significant drop in earnings related to the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment in February 2023, were in line with those preliminary figures. The East Palestine derailment saw 38 cars leave the tracks, some of them containing toxic chemicals. The subsequent fire led to an evacuatio ..read more

This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Small Fleet & Owner-Operator Summit on Wednesday. FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The Need for Commercial Vehicle Navigation DETAILS: Michael Kornhauser, sector vice president of transportation at Colorado-based technology company Trimble, advocates for commercial navigation as an essential tool to keep drivers safe, legal and efficient on the job. KEY QUOTES FROM MICHAEL KORNHAUSER: “Whether you’re responsible for one truck, five trucks or 20,000 trucks, commercial navigation is a really essential tool for, on one hand, keeping your drivers safe, ke ..read more

Hawaiian Airlines has commenced operating a second Airbus A330-300 cargo jet for Amazon on a new route between New York’s JFK airport and the retail behemoth’s West Coast air logistics hub in San Bernardino, California, the company reported in quarterly earnings Tuesday. Under a  transportation services agreement that kicked in last year, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) leases the aircraft from a dealer and transfers them to Hawaiian Airlines (NASDAQ: HA) to fly and provide routine maintenance. Hawaiian, which is branching out to all-cargo operations for the first time, began commercial revenue se ..read more

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: How owner-operators can position themselves for success DETAILS: Brielle Jaekel of FreightWaves and Adam Wingfield, founder of Innovative Logistics Group, discuss strategies for maximizing profitability. The North Carolina-based company serves small carriers. KEY QUOTES FROM WINGFIELD: “You have to know what profitability looks like to your independent business. Every business in the trucking industry is different, and every truck that hits the highway has a different business dynamic. So, the most important thing is to get your baseline first.” “If you want to be su ..read more

This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Small Fleet and Owner-Operator Summit. FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: An update on the transportation and logistics M&A landscape. DETAILS: The transportation M&A market appears to have stabilized, said Spencer Tenney, president and CEO of M&A advisory firm the Tenney Group, at FreightWaves’ Small Fleet and Owner-Operator Summit. KEY QUOTES FROM TENNEY: On what prompted the slowdown in transportation M&A: “The freight market and then this accelerated sequencing of interest rate hikes that was unlike anything that we’ve seen in the last 40 y ..read more

On Episode 709 of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, Dooner is coming to you live from FreightWaves’ Small Fleet & Owner-Operator Summit.  FreightWaves’ Alan Adler joins the show to talk about electrification options for small fleets. Are any of them viable yet? Truck Parking Club’s Evan Shelley and Hunter Shearer are celebrating their 365th parking location. We’ll learn how they’re rapidly scaling the number of available parking spots for America’s drivers.  Trucker and internet personality King Spud plays a round of what truckers really think. We’ll find out how he feels about lumpers, brok ..read more