ArcBest cutting jobs, closing terminals, consolidating brands
Key takeaways
- ArcBest is cutting jobs and closing terminals to reduce costs and improve profitability.
- Rising equipment, labor, and insurance costs continue to pressure trucking fleet operations.
- ArcBest is consolidating brands while restructuring to support long-term operational efficiency.
ArcBest Corp. is cutting its workforce by roughly 300 positions and closing 10 terminals in smaller markets as part of a plan that President and CEO Seth Runser and his team expect will save the carrier about $40 million annually.
Leaders of Arkansas-based ArcBest, which is No. 23 on the 2026 FleetOwner 500 list of the largest for-hire carriers, say they’ll trim about 2% from the company’s 14,000-strong workforce through a combination of layoffs, eliminating open positions, and not filling some vacancies. Closing the 10 service centers, they said, will reduce ArcBest’s door count nationwide by about 1%. Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters will have a say in the approval of the latter plan via a committee that also includes company officials.
“Streamlining our organization and operating footprint improves efficiency, strengthens profitability and positions us to grow without compromising the service our customers rely on,” Runser said in a statement. “ArcBest has been a trusted logistics provider for over 100 years. These actions strengthen the foundation we’ve built and prepare us to deliver for our customers over the next 100.”
Along with the job cuts and capacity trimming, Runser and his team are also consolidating ArcBest’s brands. On Aug. 1, the company’s MoLo Solutions, Panther Premium Logistics, and ArcBest Technologies will take on the core ArcBest brand. Less-than-truckload business will continue to use the ABF Freight brand, and moving services will continue to be branded as U-Pack.
ArcBest’s moves come as carriers are emerging from a long freight recession and are hopeful for a sustained upswing in demand but still need to digest much higher costs than a few years ago, including for equipment, labor, and insurance. Runser announced his team’s plans the day after the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its benchmarking report on the operational costs of trucking, which showed that every major cost category rose in 2025 and that the average cost to run a truck climbed 3.4% from the year before.
“Freight rates are finally turning a corner in 2026, but the acceleration of industry-wide costs means that fleets must continue with aggressive cost discipline,” Chad Marsilio, the COO of PGT Trucking, said in the news release announcing ATRI’s report.
The $40 million in expected annual savings amount to about 1% of ArcBest’s total operating expenses in 2025. Before those start to kick in, however, the company will book about $80 million in charges and impairments this year, more than half of which stem from the decision to abandon the company’s Vaux Freight Movement System, a suite of hardware and software designed to load or unload a trailer in fewer than five minutes.
Separate from their restructuring plan, ArcBest executives also said they’ll take a second-quarter non-cash charge of nearly $9 million to write down the value of some office space for the company’s brokerage division, a part of which will be subleased.
Shares of ArcBest (Ticker: ARCB) rose 1.4% to nearly $160 on July 17, the first session after the company’s news. Year to date, the stock has more than doubled, pushing ArcBest’s market value to over $3.5 billion. Runser and his team will report Q2 results on July 29.
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.