Top 25 LTL Trucking Companies

Cranking up profits and gaining freight, the multiregional less-than-truckload carrier looks to fill one of the last large gaps in its coverage.

Old Dominion Freight Lines avoided damage and used technology and phones to keep close contact with customers as storm and flooding pummeled its home state.

Many of the largest less-than-truckload carriers are seeking increases in non-contract rates despite the weak freight market.

Acquisition of LDS gives ArcBest subsidiary ABF Logistics a route into fast-growing dedicated market.

Old Dominion Freight Line experienced shipments and tonnage decline year-over-year in August. A contraction in US manufacturing output may be partly to blame.

Canadian partner gives $2 billion U.S. trucking company more roads to run.

Fast-growing BlueGrace Logistics should grow faster with support from private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

Despite lower volumes, many LTL carriers say they are still winning contractual rate increases.

The slight year-over-year drop in quarterly revenue was the first for ODFL since 2009.

It's a hard economy for smaller U.S. trucking companies such as Nebraska Transport Company. The carrier believes technology, partnerships can help it not just survive, but thrive.

Less-than-truckload shipments only inched upward in May.

By many accounts, the U.S. is in a freight recession. So why are regional less-than-truckload carriers building terminals, expanding into new territories and adding customers?

Freight costing "is a huge challenge," Estes Express Lines' chief operating officer told a technology conference.

Estes Express will roll out Estes Final Mile by the end of 2016, as e-commerce grows and traditional freight markets stagnate.

Old Dominion Freight Line is filling in gaps in its terminal network and building freight density.

Northeast regional LTL carrier A. Duie Pyle is blending warehousing, distribution and dedicated trucking to attract shippers.

The debate over dimensional-weight pricing has shifted from if to when it will be applied to less-than-truckload freight, the CEOs of some of the largest LTL trucking companies said at the 2016 NASSTRAC Shippers Conference.

The U.S. economy may be crawling along, but Estes Express Lines is moving faster, opening a new less-than-truckload terminal in the Chicago area.

Old Dominion Freight Line opened its 21st service center in Texas as shipment volume increases in the Lone Star State.

As part of an effort to improve yields and better cost and price shipments, FedEx Freight says it will add eight dimensional scanners to the 45 it already uses to reweigh and classify freight at terminals.

The strong surge in revenue U.S. less-than-truckload carriers enjoyed in 2014 ran out of gas last year, as weaker demand and lower fuel surcharges dragged down LTL trucking’s top line.

The first shoots of spring U.S. freight demand appeared in February, with Saia and Old Dominion Freight Line reporting increases in shipments that could signal stronger or at least more stable manufacturing and freight shipping activity.

South Carolina-based Southeastern Freight Lines is revamping its business in Canada, replacing an interline partnership with a direct cross-border offering that gives the company more control over door-to-door service.

Jack Holmes, the career UPS executive who became president of UPS Freight in 2007, will retire in June. Rich McArdle, another UPS veteran, will take his place.

Roadrunner Transportation Systems is adding less-than-truckload network capacity in Texas and Memphis and offering a guaranteed delivery service to expand business with industrial shippers.

Saia was unable to ride pricing discipline to increased profitability in the fourth quarter as volume declines, which have hit other less-than-truckload operators, proved too much to overcome for the tenth-largest U.S. LTL carrier.

Lower freight volumes drove YRC Freight to a loss in the fourth quarter, but the loss wasn’t enough to erase gains the less-than-truckload carrier made throughout the rest of 2015.

At a time when LTL shipments and freight volumes in general declined, ODFL increased its fourth-quarter shipment count 8.2 percent, while increasing revenue and profit. Lower fuel surcharges slowed revenue growth, but the carrier outperformed its peers.

Organic and acquisition-fueled growth in 2015 were not enough to offset declining freight volume and falling fuel surcharge revenue in the last three months of the year for Roadrunner Transportation Systems.

ABF Freight, the less-than-truckload arm of ArcBest, laid off more than 200 dock and yard workers as LTL shipments and tonnage dropped in the fourth quarter. ArcBest's asset-light businesses saw volumes rise in the same period.

XPO Logistics is moving rapidly to reorganize the less-than-truckload business acquired from Con-way last fall, cutting back-office and management positions while rolling out new technology for dockworkers and truck drivers.

Fast-growing Dayton Freight Lines is expanding its reach from the Midwest into the South by opening a 32-door, seven-acre service center in Memphis.

After a 10-day shutdown by federal regulators, the regional LTL carrier is back on the streets, but is closing terminals in New Jersey to refocus on its core New England territory.

Regional less-than-truckload carrier Land Air Express of New England, shut down for nearly 10 days, was cleared to resume operations after reaching an agreement with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Land Air Express of New England missed a 60-day deadline to respond to a proposed 'unsatisfactory' safety rating, leading to the Dec. 29 out-of-service order that shut the less-than-truckload carrier down. But the company has a chance to get back on the road, if regulators find it is making a "good faith" effort to improve safety fitness.

The U.S. government closed one of the largest trucking companies in the Northeast, Land Air Express of New England, last week, but has not released details to the public on why the carrier was shut down.

Old Dominion Freight Line is adding a second terminal in St. Louis, Missouri, expanding its less-than-truckload service in the city and the Midwest.

Old Dominion Freight Line is proving by example that there is plenty of life in the less-than-truckload model that served as the blueprint for trucking from the 1930s through deregulation in the 1980s.

Transporation holding company Arcbest, the parent of ABF Freight, expanded its asset-light business by adding truckload broker Bear Transportation to fast-growing ABF Logistics.