Flatbed freight

In this edition: Earnings season highlights, the rise in flatbed demand and Roadcheck starts Wednesday.

Outbound volume in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is booming, raising its market share to 3%. Flatbed market experiences a significant decrease in rejections.

Recent flatbed trucking deaths apparently caused by improperly secured loads shifting during hard braking highlights the need for proper training and safety measures.

FreightWaves’Mary O’Connelland Kurtis Tryber from EXO Freight sit down to talk about all things flatbed: booking loads, how to get information you need to get started in flatbed and some of the craziest flatbed moves.

Freight broker Landstar closes 2021 with another beat-and-raise quarter. Demand has yet to buck normal seasonal trends, indicating the first quarter will be strong as well.

PGT Trucking channels efforts and funds into two partnerships that will infuse labor market with skilled logistics technicians. 

The driver of a flatbed truck died Tuesday when the load he was hauling smashed through his cab and killed him.

Specialized and flatbed carrier Daseke posted better-than-expected third-quarter results Friday. Management said the company is working on a couple of acquisitions.

Flatbed’s much-needed technology face-lift, Chatbots and email bots as customer service tools, and harvest season wrap-ups.

The co-founder said many of his current investors called Uber and other marketplaces to discuss their flatbed capabilities but were told that “they did not intend to make that a core focus.”

CFO Thom Albrecht doesn’t think the lumber shortage has been “that big of a deal” for flatbed carriers.

Flatbed truckload provider Daseke reported first-quarter adjusted earnings better than expected. However, with a more than 5x run-up in share price over the past year, a decent quarterly report without a guidance raise sent the stock lower on Friday.

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” ZMac CEO Matt Ziegler said. “If brokerages can access our knowledge to make better capacity decisions, then we can start eliminating the headaches that come from moving oversized freight.”

Interview with Daseke’s leadership team covers recent changes and the return to M&A.

Flatbed carrier Daseke Inc. cruises past third-quarter forecasts. Operations are likely to improve again in 2021 but high-margin third-quarter project freight could create some tough comparisons.

Flatbed carrier Daseke Inc. posted a third-quarter result that highlighted the company’s restructuring efforts and easily surpassed analysts’ expectations.

Shares of Daseke surge 20% as the company’s overhaul appears to be ahead of schedule. Second quarter results were better than expectations.

As demand for flatbed capacity sags, Daseke sees strength in some end markets and continues to push forward with a company-wide overhaul.

Excluding several items, Daseke reported a near break-even first quarter. Demand headwinds in most of the markets it serves have ‘plateaued’ in recent weeks.

Flatbed volume has been building over the past few years. Read why in this article by Kayla Matthews.

Market softness, excess capacity, weak demand and soaring insurance costs and claims were the near-term challenges highlighted on Landstar’s conference call.

Is this a golden opportunity for a vertical integration, or is it a defensive move to bail out a troubled customer?

Roadrunner Transportation continues to overhaul its portfolio with the sale of its flatbed unit.

Kentucky-based Legion Logistics has opened a new satellite office in the city of Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico.  The new international office, staffed by two bilingual freight specialists, gives Legion Logistics a strategic presence in the industrial center of Mexico. “It allows us to increase our service offerings on the Mexican side and communicate more effectively […]

FreightWaves Market Expert Anthony Smith writes about the issues impacting the U.S. housing market. As important as these issues are, they have a ripple effect on other areas of the U.S. economy, including trucking.

FreightWaves is providing a forum – Market Voices – for a number of market experts.  Last week I wrote about why the ongoing decline in lumber shipments and the ongoing decline in housing starts should be a growing concern, and that continued contraction in this industry had several significant waves of secondary and tertiary economic […]

Last week the widely reported headline was “Housing Starts Climb Almost 6 Percent in April” yet many in the transportation marketplace openly questioned how that was possible. Whether it is the railroads moving the lumber to build houses or the flatbed carriers moving the lumber and other building materials to build houses, the widely held […]

After setting one record high after another in the early weeks of 2018, the weekly DAT Dry Van and Reefer Barometers have pulled back but remain in a strong growth range.

As the trucking industry continues to broadly install and learn to use the ELDs, there are beginning to be large disparities in the way the devices are impacting capacity via mode.

Flatbed freight remains red-hot with 111 loads for every truck, but what is causing the surge in demand?