Aborn Viewpoint on Old Dominion revenue drop
Aborn experts weigh in on Old Dominion's revenue dropping for the first time in three years.
Chris Peckham:
The fact that ODFL’s Q3 top-line revenue dropped for the first time in 3 years (by 0.6%) is not a red flag signaling the nation’s best LTL carrier is in any sort of financial peril, as they still have the best OR (Operating Ratio) in the industry. It’s indicative of a soft freight market, a drop in industrial production, and lower world oil prices. Industrial production accounts for 55%-60% of ODFL’s mix and domestic manufacturing overall is in contractionary territory. This, along with many other leading indicators (transportation data, inverted yield curves, lower GDP) still make the possibility of a recession in 2020 a real possibility.
Russ Aborn:
It could be that they are culling the freight that is not as profitable as they’d like. Sometimes that works better than trying to find and hire drivers, buy trucks, add line haul equipment, management, and so on to pick up freight that doesn’t add to bottom-line numbers. For them, it’s a great position to be in and they’ve worked hard to get there. Based on what we’ve seen, they certainly are not pricing new freight aggressively to secure new business.
Chris:
I agree that they are staying very disciplined. They also purchased a bunch of new equipment in early 2019 so their operating costs are a little higher. It doesn’t seem like it was an opportunity buy-more to just replace older equipment but with volumes being off, it’s contributed. Interestingly enough, however, revenue per hundredweight is up.
Russ:
All excellent points. The cwt revenue improvement
also shows pricing discipline.
About the authors:
Chris Peckham
, Director of Operations,
prior to joining Aborn & Co., Chris was director of supply chain at SharkNinja where he was responsible for procurement, inventory management, and new product development. He has also worked as vice president of transportation for the Ascena Retail Group, and as operations director for Adidas-Group Mexico.
Russ Aborn, Founder,
has worked with more than 300 companies over his career, Russ is a transportation expert who has conducted 100s of assignments aimed at reducing transportation costs. Russ is involved in freight negotiations for clients at the level of more than $300 million annually.



