2011 Was Slightly Better for Trucking

(Note: A correction has been made to this story. See the end of the story for more.) 

By the numbers, 2011 was generally a better year than 2010 for the Arkansas trucking industry.

(Click here for a PDF list of the trucking companies with the largest presence in Arkansas. A spreadsheet version is available.)

Sixteen out of 17 companies with comparative data that made it onto Arkansas Business’ largest trucking companies list this year saw revenue increases year over year. And the revenue for No. 18, Fairfield Trucking Inc., remained flat instead of falling as it did in 2010.

No. 9, USA Truck in Van Buren, saw an impressive 53.5 percent increase in revenue in 2011. But a  reported net loss of $10.8 million made 2011 the 26-year-old company’s worst year yet since the recession started.

FedEx Freight bumped YRC Worldwide Inc. of Overland Park, Kan., out of first place on the list this year. FedEx Freight, which is headquartered in Memphis, pulled in the highest revenue of the list at $4.9 billion, or a 14 percent increase over the year prior.

Patrick Reed, executive vice president and COO of FedEx Freight, said in an email last week that the industry wasn’t seeing the revenue it made in 2006, but, industry wide, less-than-truckload shipping was "continuing to stabilize."

Bruce Olney, operations safety director for the No. 15 trucking company, Hines Trucking Inc. in Prescott, wasn’t as optimistic.  "We’re still at 80 percent of what we were pre-recession," Olney said. "We’re just a lot more efficient at what we do."

Olney credited Hines’ 8.34 percent increase in revenue, up to $30 million, to the "market rebounding somewhat," a driver shortage and business efficiencies learned during the hardest years thus far of the Great Recession.

Part of the revenue growth in 2011 likely came from the selling of assets, such as the company’s unmanned trucks, Olney said.

Trucking companies like Hines have been forced to use fewer trucks more efficiently in a struggle to meet a demand for carriers that driver shortages are intensifying.

Demand is up for the raw wood products Hines hauls, but the company doesn’t have as many drivers as it needs to staff the number of trucks that would satiate that demand, so it selects loads and routes for efficacy’s sake. "We’re not growing as fast as we’d like because of lack of labor," Olney said.

(Correction, May 16, 2012: In the story’s fourth paragraph, the total 2011 revenue for FedEx Freight was incorrect. The amount has been corrected.)