Changes and challenges punctuated many major transportation companies’ operations in 2024. Bankruptcies, acquisitions, and regulatory disruptions frequently appeared in headlines and carriers’ earning calls.
Trucking is never a slow industry, and 2024 brought groundbreaking transformative changes for the nation’s top transportation businesses. This recap highlights the top 10 market stories according to FleetOwner readers. Among the top stories are major acquisitions and disposals, preparations for shifting regulations, a mass layoff, and a bankruptcy filing.
10. TFI’s Bédard: Freight market won’t turn until next year
Very few trucking executives have been willing to make market predictions in 2024 after their cautious forecasts of a year ago turned out to be over-optimistic. But TFI International Inc.’s Alain Bédard—not one to shy away from concise and forceful statements—bucked that trend on April 26, albeit with zero optimism.
“This freight recession will not change probably before ’25,” Bédard, TFI’s chairman, president, and CEO, told analysts after Montreal-based TFI reported its first-quarter results. “We have an election year in the U.S. I mean, a lot of our customers are just waiting to see what’s going to happen.” Read more…
9. Wheel supplier Accuride files Chapter 11 papers for U.S. operations
The private-equity owners of Accuride Corp.’s U.S. operations filed for protection from the wheel and wheel-end maker’s creditors in October and are looking to sell their businesses’ assets.
In filings with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Michigan-based Accuride disclosed that it had total debts between $500 million and $1 billion—and was down to about $6 million in available cash. Read more…
8. Electric fleet vehicle startup Canoo faces financial troubles, furloughs Oklahoma workers
Electric fleet vehicle startup Canoo Inc. furloughed 23% of its workforce, around 30 workers, at its Oklahoma City facility in November.
Canoo manufactures what it calls “lifestyle vehicles” and “lifestyle delivery vehicles.” Its lineup includes electric delivery vans, pickup trucks, and passenger vans. The company has had high-profile orders from private, public, and federal entities such as Walmart (No. 7 on the FleetOwner 500: Private), NASA, and the U.S. Army. Read more…
7. Auto hauler Proficient takes home $200M from IPO
A startup company’s plan to consolidate part of the auto hauler sector moved forward with an initial public offering that raised $200 million for its backers in May.
Proficient Auto Logistics Inc., which is based in Jacksonville, sold more than 14.3 million shares to investors at $15 apiece on May 9. After discounts and commissions for the company’s investment banks, founders Ross Berner and Mark McKinney and their team took home $200 million from the IPO. (Proficient shares, which are now trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol PAL, ended that week right at their $15 IPO price.) Read more…
6. Daimler Truck CEO: We’ll be ready for any pre-2027 order surge
Daimler Truck North America will be prepared to respond to any surge in purchase orders before the 2027 introduction of more stringent California emissions standards, CEO and interim CFO Martin Daum told analysts and investors in March.
“We have a great position, we have great products, we are prepared for any regulation,” Daum said at the presentation of Daimler Truck’s fourth-quarter and full-year results. “I am absolutely confident that we will master any reaction of the markets […] Certainly if we see in ’25 and ’26 a pull-forward effect, we’ll take it and go from there.” Read more…
5. What we've seen so far in '24: Parsing trucking companies’ Q2 earnings calls
On August 9, executives of several publicly traded trucking companies said they expected to know around Labor Day if the relatively normal seasonal upswing the industry has seen since spring will actually produce a peak season worthy of the moniker and—maybe, just maybe—herald the beginning of a legitimate upswing in the freight economy.
“If we do, in fact see the seasonal uptick as you get probably to the back half of August and really into September, then I think we would have more confidence that this is maybe a trend that we would expect to continue into fourth quarter and lead to a much more favorable bid season into next year,” Adam Miller, chief executive of Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings (No. 3 on the FleetOwner 500: For-Hire), told analysts on a July 24 conference call. Read more…
4. FedEx to spin off its LTL operations in coming months
FedEx Corp. executives announced on December 19 plans to separate their less-than-truckload operation, the country’s largest, into its own public company, a move analysts predicted this summer when the Memphis-based shipping giant said it would review the LTL group’s future.
Word of the plan to spin off FedEx Freight comes nearly six months after President and CEO Raj Subramaniam said his team had heard from “several investors and analysts” about the future of the $9 billion-plus LTL group. Investors have given significantly higher valuations of late to non-union LTL carriers like FedEx Freight than they have to transportation companies more generally. Read more…
3. Nikola CEO: 'We're all in, and there's no turning back.'
Nikola Corporation’s pivot away from battery electric trucks and full focus on hydrogen fuel cell EVs continued to pay off, according to its Q2 earnings.
Nikola produced 77 trucks and shipped 73 during the second quarter of 2024, a 58% and 38% jump, respectively, year over year. First quarter, executives aimed to ship 50 to 60 trucks in Q2, marking the second consecutive quarter they have beaten expectations. Read more…
2. Daimler Truck signals production 'flexibility' if Trump tariffs require it
Daimler Truck North America is well positioned to absorb the impact of possible tariffs targeting Mexico under the incoming Trump administration, the company’s chairwoman and CEO told analysts Nov. 7.
Speaking after Daimler Truck Holding AG reported its third-quarter results, Karin Rådström said it’s too early to speculate on possible Trump tariffs taking aim at products brought into the U.S. from Mexico. But she noted that the company can move production relatively easily and that all of its Freightliner, Western Star, and Thomas Built Buses models can be made at either its U.S. or Mexican plants. Shifts could be added where needed, she said. Read more…
1. TFI shopping for big acquisition as it looks to grow LTL operations in '25
TFI International Inc. is preparing for “something of size” regarding a U.S. acquisition late next year or in early 2026, Alain Bédard, the mega fleet's chairman, president, and chief executive, told analysts on October 22.
Speaking to analysts after TFI (No. 7 on the FleetOwner 500: For-Hire) reported its third-quarter results, Bédard said he was interested in growing the company’s less-than-truckload and logistics business via a sizable transaction on top of the several tuck-in acquisitions TFI makes most years. The company’s last big buy was in late 2023 for specialty transportation firm Daseke Inc., which TFI valued at about $1.1 billion. Read more…
Along with these articles, FleetOwner publishes several popular annual features that garner attention throughout the trucking and transportation industries. These include our annual looks at the largest commercial transportation systems in the U.S., the FleetOwner 500: For-Hire and FleetOwner 500: Private Fleets.
Our annual profiles of women in the industry, Women in Transportation 2024, was published this summer. Each year, FleetOwner recognizes the transportation operations of private fleets with the FleetOwner Private Fleet of the Year award. This fall, we expanded and rebranded our annual New Models to the 2025 FleetOwner vehicle guide, our largest ever look at the next generation of heavy-duty, medium-duty, light-duty, and alternative-powered trucks and vans.
We put a bow on the year with the 2024 Trucking by the Numbers feature, an info-graphical look at the facts and figures that make up the trucking and transportation industries. To view what's ahead for FleetOwner in the new year, please checkout our 2025 Media Kit.
