Old Dominion boosts capex plans to capitalize on ‘unique opportunities’
Key Highlights
- Old Dominion increased its 2026 capex by $115 million, focusing on real estate and equipment acquisitions.
- Werner plans to spend up to $250 million in 2026 on equipment, real estate, and technology.
- Both companies’ capex increases reflect optimism about the for-hire market’s recovery.
Saying they want to take advantage of “strategic purchase opportunities,” the leaders of Old Dominion Freight Line have beefed up their 2026 capital spending plan by $115 million.
Speaking after North Carolina-based Old Dominion reported its second-quarter results, executives said the No. 10 company on the 2026 FleetOwner 500 list of largest for-hire carriers has the chance to check off some real estate items on its long-term growth list and added that they are pulling forward some equipment buys from 2027.
“We’ve got a couple of unique opportunities where it could be something that fit in the long-term plan in a market [where it’s] hard to find real estate,” CFO Adam Satterfield said on a July 29 conference call. “Then you’ve also got some lease-to-own conversions, timing of projects that we may get started in the balance of this year that may have been in ’27 initially. […] It’s not necessarily a need to increase the capacity of our service center network. We’ve still got north of 35% excess capacity there. We’ve got plenty of power and trailing equipment capacity.”
Satterfield, President and CEO Marty Freeman and other Old Dominion leaders have added $55 million to the $125 million they had set aside for real estate and terminal projects this year. For tractors and trailers, they’ve increased Old Dominion’s 2026 budget to $155 million from $95 million.
And while it’s clear Freeman and his team wouldn’t be hiking spending if they were negative on where the freight market is heading, some perspective on these increases is warranted: Historically, Old Dominion’s annual capex runs between 10% and 15% of revenues; the $380 million (which is about a little less than half the company’s average from 2022 through 2024) might amount to 7%.
Also boosting their capex guidance this week were Werner Enterprises executives. They now expect to spend a net $215 million to $250 million on equipment, real estate, and technology, up from their previous range of $185 million to $225 million. They announced the increase after a quarter in which net capex actually turned negative for Werner, No. 11 on the FleetOwner 500, as the company sold more equipment (in part because it has restructured its one-way business) and spent less on tech projects as they near their finish line.
On Werner’s conference call with analysts and investors, CFO Christopher Wikoff said the main goal of the planned capex hike is to rejuvenate the company’s fleet. Today, the average truck is three years old, he said, and the average trailer 6.3 years. In a tightening market where many fleet leaders have said drivers have become harder to recruit and keep, that requires some investment.
“I want to make sure our fleet is in the best possible position as we enter 2027,” Chairman and CEO Derek Leathers told analysts. “I’ll remind everybody that the FirstFleet acquisition alone moved the fleet age by three-tenths of a year. We knew that we were going to have to work through that bubble as we go forward. We’ve decided to take some bigger bites quicker in the back half of the year so that our fleet is in the best possible position.”
The spending signals from Old Dominion and Werner are the latest indication that the leaders of large fleets have grown more confident in the freight market’s upturn, which nearly all of them say is being powered almost exclusively by shrinking supply factors. But as those dynamics persist and demand increasingly holds its own, executives such as Knight-Swift Transportation CEO Adam Miller have said they see a recovery that has legs.
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.