LTL

Taking steps to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to automate various types of shipping transactions conducted over e-mail, Minneapolis, Minn.-based global third-party logistics (3PL) services provider and freight forwarder C.H. Robinson (CHR) today heralded the progress it has made on that front, calling the utilization a key step in breaking “a long-standing barrier to automation.

XPO opened up three of the 28 service center locations it acquired through an early December court-supervised auction, in which a dozen trucking companies bought properties that resold about three-fourths of Yellow’s properties for a total of just under $1.9 billion.

The new edition of the TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index, which was recently released by New York-based investment firm TD Cowen Inc. and Shreveport, La.-based 3PL and freight audit and payment company AFS Logistics LLC, was somewhat mixed, with less-than-truckload (LTL) and truckload rates steady, and parcel rates being impacted by fuel surcharge increases and various accessorial charges amid lower demand.

The best fleets, buffeted by higher costs and now increasing environmental mandates, manage to stay ahead of competition through vision, strategy, and execution. But in the end, executives say it’s their people who make the biggest difference.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has won what the union calls “a major victory” in a breach of contract lawsuit against Yellow Corp. Unfortunately for about 24,000 Teamsters who lost their jobs when Yellow ceased operations last August, the victory arrives about nine months too late.

As key parts of this expansion, the company said that it has set up new locations in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Laredo, Texas, and also tapped 30-year logistics veteran Troy Ryley as President, Echo Mexico.

The liquidation of Yellow Corp., once the largest less-than-truckload (LTL) and the nation’s 13th-largest trucking company when it ceased operations last August, has continued to prove that Yellow’s assets were valuable even without operating as a functioning trucking company.  

ODFL reported that revenue per day rose 1.2% annually, driven by an increased in LTL revenue per hundredweight, which was slightly offset by a 3.0% decrease in LTL tons per day. The company added that the change in daily LTL tons was attributed to a 3.2% decrease in LTL weight per shipment that was partially offset by a 0.2% increase in LTL shipments per day.

While this year may be a close copy of 2023 in terms of supply chain execution as it relates to e-commerce moves, forecasting is more precarious. The instability and conflict have no upside, only more disruption—which inevitably leads to service and cost impacts across the board.

The cessation of Yellow continues to have repercussions throughout the $58 billion LTL market. Now, a shuffling of the capacity equation is causing strategic changes, and shippers need to adapt to the new alignment of resources to find operational success.

Saia, the nation’s eighth-largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, enjoyed a blowout fourth quarter with earnings exceeding Wall Street analysts’ expectations in one of the first indications of a post-Yellow freight boom in the LTL sector.

Quarterly revenue, at $1.94 billion, was up 6% annually, and adjusted earnings per share fell 21.4% annually, to $0.77.

A change at the top is coming for Greeneville, Tenn.-based asset-light freight and logistics services provider Forward Air, with the company announcing today that company Chief Executive Officer and President Tom Schmitt has left the company. The company added that Schmitt is also no longer a member of the company’s Board.

It’s hardly much consolation to its 30,000 or so former workers—or shippers left without Yellow’s reliable capacity for 49,000 less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments a day—but Yellow says it has repaid in full a $700 million loan approved for the struggling trucker in the final days of the Trump administration.