Dallas TX-based temperature-controlled carrier Frozen Food Express Industries Inc. (FFEX) announced its financial and operating results for the quarter ended March 31, 2008.
Revenue rose 9.6% to $116.7 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2008, from $106.5 million in the 2007 quarter. Excluding fuel surcharges, revenue climbed 2.1% to $93.7 million from $91.8 million in first quarter 2007. FFEX sustained a $1.7 million loss from operations during the 2008 period, versus a loss of $668 thousand from the comparable period of 2007. The transportation firm had a pre-tax loss of $1.6 million in first quarter 2008 in contrast to a pre-tax loss of $456 thousand from the 2007 quarter.
“It's no secret that the economy is not where it was this time last year,”said Stoney M. “Mit” Stubbs, president and chief executive officer. “When the economy heads down, truckers are usually leading the pack. That's the bad news. The good news is that truckers usually lead the pack on the way up as well. Layer on top of that what FFEX has accomplished since this time last year. We have improved some fundamentals on the revenue side. We have expanded both of our asset-lite service offerings, logistics and intermodal. But with the weak economy in 2008, there is only so much that we can do on the linehaul-trucking revenue side. We will do all we can.
“One thing that impeded our ability to profitably grow our revenue over the past 15 or so months has been an industry-wide oversupply of trucks,” he said. “Very recently, I have begun to see reports from some industry watchers that this may have started to correct itself. ”
