‘The confidence is coming back’ – TFI’s Bédard says Trump moves are priming industrial rebound
Key takeaways:
- TFI International's CEO Alain Bédard highlighted a positive outlook for the freight sector following the OBBBA, with industrial customers gaining confidence from tax benefits.
- Despite lower net income and revenues, TFI reported better operating ratios in its divisions, supported by the strategic acquisition of Daseke.
- TFI’s shares rose after the earnings report, with executives anticipating that OBBBA-related tax incentives will drive capital investment among their customers, benefiting the company in the future.
One of the trucking sector’s more downbeat voices during the freight recession is sounding a lot more chipper in the wake of the recent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Speaking after TFI International reported improved second-quarter results, Chairman, President, and CEO Alain Bédard said his teams are hearing more positive chatter from industrial customers that are among the companies most likely to benefit from expense deduction rules (re)instated by the OBBBA. Confidence among business leaders is coming back thanks to the Trump administration’s budget plan, he added.
“We feel way better—that we’re finally going to get out of this freight recession,” said Bédard, who in recent quarters has been more sober even than most of his peers about the prospects of an upturn. “Hopefully, things will start to roll. We haven’t seen anything concrete yet, but all the signs are there.”
Montreal-based TFI stands to benefit from the industrial freight market returning to growth not just via its less-than-truckload business but also because it last year acquired flatbed carrier Daseke for about $1.1 billion. Through the first six months of this year, TFI took in half of its revenues from customers in the manufacturing, building materials, automotive, and metals/mining sectors.
During a conference call to discuss Q2 and their outlook, Bédard—who said his team was “maybe one year too early” in buying Daseke—and CFO David Saperstein said the tax elements of the OBBBA should quickly flow through to the “real” economy. Saperstein pointed out that the accelerated capital investment depreciation will save TFI itself $20 million this year and another $20 million in 2026.
“Think about that throughout the economy, and this is really going to go towards companies that are doing capex, right?” Saperstein said. “These are the companies that are our customers.”
The TFI team’s relative optimism echoes recent comments from Paccar CEO Preston Feight, who said after the trucking manufacturer reported its Q2 results that some fleet customers were stepping up talks about buying equipment thanks to the OBBBA. Bédard and Saperstein also were more upbeat than Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings CEO Adam Miller, who said on July 23 that “conversations today with customers are a bit more, I think, stable than they were a quarter ago” in large part because businesses in general have been reacting less aggressively to President Trump’s tariff push than most observers had expected.
During the second quarter, TFI produced net income of $98.2 million on total revenues (ex-fuel surcharges) of nearly $1.8 billion. Those numbers were down from $116 million and $2.3 billion, respectively, in the same period of last year, but executives hung their hats on large improvements in the operating ratios of their LTL and truckload groups. The former’s OR improved 3.6 percentage points to 86.2% from early this year; the latter improved 2.5 points to 90.1%.
On the afternoon after the earnings report and conference call, shares of TFI (Ticker: TFII) were up more than 3% to about $93.07. They are, however, still down about 30% over the past six months, which has cut the company’s market capitalization to about $7.8 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.
With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.