Watch Now


Estes opens online portal for customers as cyberattack drags on

LTL carrier also requests communication via X, tells customers, ‘We understand your frustration’

It's treacherous conditions for Estes Express, caught in a cyberattack. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Estes Express, still suffering the impact of a cybersecurity breach, has set up an online portal to communicate with the company.

The page is a sign that the less-than-truckload carrier has at least one small facet of its website running, as the page is under the normal estes-express.com URL. But there is little else on the page except a form to be filled out by customers and other entities doing business with Estes.

At the top of the page is a declaration that Estes is “Open for Business.” And In largely a verbatim repeat of what the company said Tuesday via its feed on X, formerly known as Twitter, Estes said its “terminals and drivers are effectively picking up and delivering freight while we work through this event. We’re working as quickly as possible to resolve this issue and to return to business as usual.”

The form on the web page asks for the usual information: contact name, email, phone, subject and a description of the freight to be picked up or dropped off.


Responses to the Tuesday tweet by Estes confirming that the technology outage Monday was a cybersecurity breach showed the hurdles Estes must climb to service its customers.

“With the outage in our online tracking system, we are unable to track and trace freight currently, but our Operations team is working diligently to deliver freight to your customer,” the company posted multiple times in response to a customer query.

“We are making every effort to continue to follow normal procedures,” Estes also stated.


Estes also expressed sympathy for beleaguered customers. “We understand your frustration,” the company wrote. “Response times for the form vary depending on the inquiry. We appreciate your patience during this challenging time.”

It asks also that customers send a direct message via X to communicate with the company and noted that its representatives can still be reached on their cell phones, though the company phones are out of service.

Given that Estes is a privately held company, there will be no way to know the financial impact of the cyberattack.

The only public guideline that might be looked to for perspective is Forward Air (NASDAQ: FWRD), also an LTL carrier — though with a specialty involving freight moving out of airports. It was the victim of a cyberattack in 2020.

While there are significant differences between the two companies, looking back at the Forward Air hack might provide some degree of reference for what Estes could be facing. 

When Forward was struck, as a public company it needed to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission the possible size of the hit on its finances.

Just before the company released its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings report, it filed a report with the SEC saying its expected net income would be 53 to 55 cents per share. That was down from a forecast of 71 to 75 cents. The number came in at the high end of the range, 55 cents. That marked a decline of about 27% from the high-end forecast of 75 cents.

The bulk of the Forward Air cyberattack was fixed in about a week.


Deutsche Bank, in its daily transportation notes, weighed in on the Estes cyberattack for a second consecutive day Wednesday. 

“Based on our discussions with industry contacts, we believe this is causing significant disruption to an already disrupted LTL market, as tens of thousands of additional shipments per day need to find new carriers,” Deutsche said in its report. “While it’s uncertain how long it will take to get back online, we believe this is creating further volume opportunities for other LTL carriers, that will likely be reflected in October numbers. To the extent this increase in volume is sustainable or not will depend on the extent and length of the outage.” 

More articles by John Kingston

Debt rating agencies mostly positive on Forward Air’s acquisition of Omni

BNSF, truck drivers reach settlement in Illinois digital fingerprinting lawsuit

Trucking numbers in BMO earnings again show weakening credit performance

8 Comments

  1. Chris Bush

    Well go pick it up Katy D. They are likely having to create a whole new website from scratch, what would you do if you got hacked and everything froze, and hackers ask for $100 million in cryptocurrency, now? They will likely have to pay them off, but this takes time. Be patience with these folks, they are doing their best

  2. Katy D

    That all sounds great, but no one is answering the online portal except with a canned message that they can’t track your freight. A four day outage is bush league and totally unacceptable. This will likely be my last shipment with these folks, since our production is being severely impacted. I understand that crises happen, but how it’s handled is what I judge by, and this is being handled very poorly. My freight has been sitting at a terminal 20 miles away since Monday.

  3. Tagh

    Estes asks that you DM them on X… But you can’t DM them unless either they follow you, or you pay X for upgraded service.

    I am still waiting for an urgent delivery which was expected days ago. No one at the company can obtain any updates since it passed through one of their depots over the weekend.

  4. K Rorabeck

    I have used the Estes online portal and received an emailed reply within a few hours. Considering what they are dealing with this short delay seemed reasonable to me. I also have contacted our account manager by his cell phone and received information immediately. While I do hope this is short term disruption, we have not had a problem either setting up a pickup or having shipments delivered on time this week. Just doing it old school instead of all online.

  5. Valerie Stanford

    Estes is not responding to this so called Online Portal. As a Logistics Company I went thru a Cyber Attack 4 years ago and we were back up and working within 48 hours, why aren’t they? SOMEONE must have a cell phone in the company that can respond. I have an urgent delivery, if nothing else I can go get it, if I knew what location it was in. Estes is not handling this professionally at all.

  6. Kenneth Moore

    The online portal they have set up provided no response to my tracking inquiry. I sympathize that the company is experiencing this. However, not knowing when to be available to lift my shipment off their truck is a major inconvenience.

Comments are closed.

John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.