The less-than-truckload (LTL) company saw month-to-date revenue per day decrease 7 percent from the year prior, as of Wednesday morning.
For the full month of April, revenue per day will decrease approximately 6 percent, give or take 0.5 percentage points.
“We were encouraged to see signs of improved demand for our service in the first quarter, and our LTL tons per day in both February and March tracked in line with normal seasonality,” said Marty Freeman, CEO and president of Old Dominion. “That said, there continues to be uncertainty with the economy, which can mean that a full recovery in our business trends might take additional time.”
Chief financial officer Adam Satterfield acknowledged that the consistent performance through March could have been pulling forward of freight ahead of the tariffs.
Old Dominion kept its market share in the period despite the demand decrease, which is “somewhere in the 12 percent to 13 percent range,” said Satterfield.
The company is trimming capital expenditures amid the tariff uncertainty, now expecting this annual spending to total approximately $450 million, down $125 million compared with prior expectations.
The impact of tariffs on truckload company Knight-Swift Transportation has spurred a “more cautious tone among shippers that brought a pause to the momentum in the market,” said CEO Adam Miller during a Wednesday earnings call.
“The increased uncertainty among shippers and growing concern among consumers resulted in lower volumes and an absence of typical seasonal build in March,” Miller said. “This has also impacted current rate negotiations in the truckload bid season. We are still achieving [rate] increases in the low-to-mid single-digit percentage range.”
Miller indicated that some Knight-Swift customers are pressing forward with orders “with little change,” while others have either already cut back on, or are in the process of, cutting back on China-centered purchases. Another cohort is still in “wait-and-see mode,” like many customers of J.B. Hunt.
“At this point, our customers are expressing more concern around cost impacts of tariffs and less concern regarding demand from their customers,” Miller said. “These strategies can create negative disruptions in volume in the near term.”
The trucking firm downgraded its second-quarter adjusted earnings guidance to 30 to 38 cents (from 46 to 50 cents).
The tariff situation is exacerbating the long-running issues the wider trucking industry has experienced over the past few years, in which an imbalance of trucking capacity and freight demand has resulted in a three-year freight recession.
According to ODFL’s Satterfield, LTL tonnage is down about 15 percent compared to 2021 levels.
Trucking’s immediate future will likely see a decline in revenue and earnings if projections of inbound cargo volumes plummeting at the West Coast ports come to pass. Serious declines of U.S. imports would further negatively impact trucking businesses reliant on moving freight across the country.
“I think what we’re looking at is we’re already assuming that May is going to be weaker as a result of West Coast imports dropping off like everyone’s expecting,” said Knight-Swift’s Miller. “Right now, we’re working on plans to try to limit capacity in in the markets we feel could be affected.”
North of the border, TFI International had an acquisition fall through its fingertips due to the tariffs. CEO Alain Bedard said M&A activity will be “minimal” for the remainder of 2025 after the company closed two small trucking deals to kick off the second quarter.
“We have one transaction that we really liked, but because of all this uncertainty on tariffs we had to walk away from that deal,” Bedard told analysts in Thursday’s earnings call. “Because of all this uncertainty, we said, ‘no, forget about it. We can’t touch that. Maybe later on, we’ll see down the road once we have better clarity.’”
TFI, which reneged on an earlier decision to re-domicile in the U.S., had already anticipated a “difficult 2025,” Bedard said in February. The trucking firm has had to operate under the backdrop of 25-percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as 25-percent duties on products not already compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
LTL revenue for TFI sank 13 percent year over year, while specialty truckload miles in the U.S. declined up to 15 percent, depending on the week.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Trucking Alliance said 70 percent of carriers have seen loads to the U.S. either cancelled or paused.
Old Dominion sees opportunity in Amazon’s LTL push
During its first-quarter earnings call, Old Dominion shrugged off concerns about competition from Amazon in the LTL space. The e-commerce giant launched an inbound LTL service within its full truckload Amazon Freight offering earlier this month after reports surfaced in the months prior.
The service is built for suppliers that want to deliver goods to Amazon facilities, before they are stored and shipped through the tech titan’s delivery network.
Although Amazon Freight has more than 60,000 trailers and 20,000 intermodal containers, Freeman said he didn’t see the LTL offering as a threat to either Old Dominion or the sector.
“As I understand it, it’s mainly geared towards their own suppliers. And I actually see it as an opportunity for us to help them with their logistics needs,” said Freeman. “If their suppliers need to pick up the same day, we certainly cover all 48 states and we’re able to help them out with that. So I don’t really see that as a material threat to us, more of an opportunity, in my opinion.”
Satterfield noted the growth in e-commerce should continue to be a tailwind for ODFL.
“We’ve seen it developing over time—that’s an opportunity for shipment sizes to become smaller and to be moved through an LTL network, and those retailers can leverage our network as part of their supply chain,” Satterfield said.
