What we heard: Nuggets from Saia, Schneider, TFI, and XPO’s recent earnings calls
Key takeaways
- Saia reported a 26% increase in operating profits driven by revenue growth and contractual renewals.
- Schneider is reducing capital expenditures to focus on fleet efficiency.
- TFI is addressing rate pressures in its LTL segment by planning to raise prices.
- XPO is experiencing momentum with higher revenue per shipment.
The quarterly earnings season delivers a barrage of information from many of the highly ranked carriers on the FleetOwner 500 list. A lot of the data points delivered by C-suites connect to broader industry trends, but just as many help shed light on companies’ individual strategies and journeys.
Here, we’ve compiled some notes and insights from the recent reports and conference calls of four companies that all rank in the top 18 of this year’s FleetOwner 500. Our goal here isn’t to deliver grand, sweeping conclusions about today’s freight market but rather to help show how some of the industry’s most notable names are dealing with questions such as labor costs, capital investments, pricing strategies, and longer-term strategic journeys. Along the way, these snapshots help illustrate how “the freight market” is really a massive collection of stories being written (and rewritten) on a very regular basis.
Saia’s double-digit moves
Fritz Holzgrefe, president and CEO of Saia, was among the fleet leaders who in late April and early May said they expected to put up some big numbers in the spring quarter as customers grew more confident, supply tightened, and rates rose.
Three months later, he can check that box: Saia’s operating profits popped 26% year over year on revenue growth of 17%, which was powered in part by contractual renewals that rose 10.7% for both June and the full quarter.
“Revenue per shipment from April to June—this is ex-fuel—was up about 4%,” Holzgrefe told analysts July 30. “That’s good traction, good progress for us inside the quarter, which we really like. But we’ve got to keep pressing the gas pedal on that.”
Investors and some analysts, meanwhile, pushed the gas pedal on the 2.2% drop in Saia’s LTL revenue per hundredweight during the second quarter as well as a few other profitability metrics. Holzgrefe and CFO Matt Batteh talked about the mix shifts from Saia’s building of a national network in recent years, as well as two wage increases the company has instituted in the past 10 months and an ongoing recovery of volumes in Saia’s Los Angeles region, where the company last year said goodbye to some large customers.
While the executives were positive about the direction of travel at Saia, investors chose to produce a double-digit move of their own on July 30. Shares of Saia (Ticker: SAIA) fell 11% to about $350 that day, and they’ve only recovered to about $362 since then.
Saia leaders reiterated their 2026 capex forecast of $350 million to $400 million in the company's Q2 earnings release.
Schneider’s set on trailers
The leaders of Schneider National Inc. have focused their 2026 capital spending plan on lowering the age of their fleet, which comprises more than 14,400 power units, according to the 2026 FleetOwner 500 list of the largest for-hire carriers. On the company’s July 30 call with analysts, CFO Darrell Campbell said he’s satisfied with the state of Schneider’s fleet of roughly 76,000 trailers—which means it’s time to save a few bucks versus plan.
“For 2026, we’re revising our net capex guidance to a range of $350 million to $400 million, down from $400 million to $450 million,” Campbell said. “The reduction from our previous outlook is driven by a lower need for trailing equipment and consistent with our ongoing focus on asset efficiency. Our areas of investment will continue to support growth across intermodal, especially dray capacity, and in dedicated, particularly in specialty equipment.”
With its move, Schneider is going in the opposite direction of Old Dominion Freight Line, whose executives late last month said they were ramping up spending to take advantage of some “strategic purchase opportunities” in both real estate and equipment.
Schneider’s Q2 earnings report features an operating ratio of 95.4%, an improvement of 70 basis points from the first quarter.
TFI looks to recover from 3PL pricing slip
Many carrier executives have been talking about needing to raise rates to recover rising insurance, labor, and equipment costs. On July 27, TFI International Chairman, President, and CEO Alain Bédard told analysts and investors that the need to hike prices in part of the company’s LTL business was because “we probably made a mistake.”
TFI’s LTL work accounted for 38% of the company’s revenue in the first half of this year. Bédard said business with small and midsized companies is doing well, as are TFI’s dealings with corporate customers. The issue of late: Third-party logistics work, where TFI’s boss said his teams were “inundated with volume because, probably, we were the cheapest guy in the country.”
Not for much longer, however. Bédard said TFI teams are addressing the issue “as we speak.”
“Now, does that take three quarters? I don’t think so,” he said. “We know what the issue is. We know that the market is still soft to assess, but we’re very, very cheap right now with our rates in some sectors. So we’re going to be fixing that.”
TFI’s Q2 earnings release includes details of operating profits in the company’s truckload jumping 50% from the prior-year period.
XPO gathers momentum
The leaders of XPO see the company gathering steam as the year progresses: Strategy Chief Ali Faghri told analysts on July 30 that revenue per shipment will grow more quickly than previously expected this quarter and next thanks to higher rates making their way through XPO’s customer base. CEO Mario Harik followed that up by saying those improvements, along with the benefits of technology and efficiency programs, should let XPO post a Q3 operating ratio below 81% where typical seasonality would have that figure by more than 82%.
“If you look at the volume side, it has tracked well above seasonality here more recently,” Harik said on XPO’s conference call. “And we’re seeing both our initiative in gaining market share as well as the positivity we’re hearing from our customers translate into more freight on our trucks.”
How durable do XPO’s executives think their progress is? By one measure, very: Harik told analysts that the company’s share gains, with rate increases to close its gap with premium carriers and a push to grow accessorial revenues, have it on a course to improve its operating ratio to the low 70s.
“We’re able to onboard more of these customers who value service, value relationships,” Harik said before adding that XPO’s “double-digit pricing opportunity is what would get us there and beyond over the next, call it, five-plus years.”
The Q2 report from XPO includes a mention of a company-record damage claims ratio of less than 0.2%.
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.