Western Railroad Discussion > Werner, Marten and Schneider

I am posting this info because these truckload carriers are large customers of the railroads.

WERNER TRANSPORTATION

Revenue $508.7 million compared to $534.4 million down 5 percent

Net Income down 41%

Truckload division the largest unit revenue down 8 percent to $384.3 million while operating income fell 59% to $19.8 million

Average revenue per tractor down 4.7 percent

Average lengrh of haul dowm 3% with 2 percent fewer tractors operating

7175 tractors in truckload 240 fewer than 2015  Ninety trucks removed from dedicated contract services which accounts for 55 percent of truckload business

MARTEN

Revenue $170.5 compared to $171.3 million third quarter 2015

Profit   $8.4 million compared to $8.4 million

Truckload segment revenue $85.5 million down 1.3% from $86.6 million Operating income down 21% to $6.5 million

Dedicated contract operating income increased to $5.5 million increase of 40 percent

Intermodal operating income up 43% $1.6 million

Brokerage operating income up 14 percent to $1.2 million

Schneider

Schneider has announced their intentions to go public with their stock.  It is believed that the family wants to do this to improve liquidity. They presently are privatley owned. However some stock brokers believe this is a move to indicate the value of the company as there is a strong rumor that FEDEX has interest  in purchasing Schneider which would give them a large foot print in thr truckload business, intermodal and last mile delivery.
This info from Transport Toipics issue October 17 2017

YRC TRANSPORTATION

YRC must pay teamsters $712,244 in damages to settle a greivance from 2015 in which teamsters claimed YRC moved more than 26 percent of there total miles to rail and dedicated carriage. YRC has agreement that they can move 26 percent of total miles for a year via rail or dedicated carriage

In my opinion even with the penalty this is a good deal for YRC--need less drivers and  less tractors

From Transport Topics October 17 2016

Dale Smith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/16 12:45 by mearsksealand.

In many cases, family owned companies or "closely held" companies have little choice but to go public.  An aging founder has a need to distribute shares to pay estate taxes, hand on the firm to kids who may not be active in the firm, etc.  If private equity isn't interested in a deal, then an existing public company could be interested.

Trade 50 or a hundred million dollars of their liquid stock for your closely held shares. You can sell off the UPS, FedEx, Berkshire etc shares without disturbing these deep and liquid markets.

(A better way is to share stock among long time managers, employees, etc while you're alive. There are ways to cash out and transfer the future value to the people who make it happen. It's one of the things Goldman Sachs does exceptionally well.)

I always enjoy reading about the truck lines and their relationships with the railroads, so thanks for the update.

Interesting resutls, Dave, thanks for posting.  Notice that Werner didn't report intermodal
revenues.  I think I may have seen one of their trailers, but can't recall for sure.  At any
rate, their intermodal footprint is very small, and it shows in their results.  

The Schneider-Fed Ex item is interesting.  I wonder how much of the company the family
will sell.  Such a deal may not give Fed Ex what they're looking for in the trucking business.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

mearsksealand Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> YRC TRANSPORTATION
>
> In my opinion even with the penalty this is a good
> deal for YRC--need less drivers and  less
> tractors
>
> Dale Smith

While more of a different topic, I do not agree with the wholesale loss of jobs as something good. As an overall picture, we need more blue collar jobs, not less.

jst3751 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> mearsksealand Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > YRC TRANSPORTATION
> >
> > In my opinion even with the penalty this is a
> good
> > deal for YRC--need less drivers and  less
> > tractors
> >
> > Dale Smith
>
> While more of a different topic, I do not agree
> with the wholesale loss of jobs as something good.
> As an overall picture, we need more blue collar
> jobs, not less.

Yes, but we need more productivity to make those blue collar jobs more valuable.

Look  at the 150 car trains of today, with just two crew members. In the steam era, that would have been four locomotives of two people each, plus one head brakeman, a conductor, and a rear brakeman. And, a team of people in the division shops.

Adjusted for inflation, an engineer makes far more money than an engineer did in 1940.  But does an order of magnitude more productive work.

(Reasonable people can differ on whether labor or capital is harvesting the fruits of labor's work, but we've done that on other threads)

No one likes to see jobs lost but in YRC case if they don't take these measures the whole company wld shutdown as this is part of their recovery plan from the large debts they have from earlier years

DaleSmith

Posted from iPhone

Directly relevant:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/technology/self-driving-trucks-first-mission-a-beer-run.html?_r=0

I've followed the development of driver-less trucks fairly closely, but I have to say that this happened much sooner than I expected.  (If not following the link:  Anheuser-Busch shipped a load of beer from Loveland, CO to Colorado Springs in a "self-driving" tandem rig;  120 miles, including traversing Denver, on I-25;  A "just-in-case" driver was aboard, but not used.)

My speculation has been that "if and when", the western U.S. Interstates would be the initial "test bed", but I wondered about the cities such as Albuquerque as barriers.  I-25 in Denver is quite a test!