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TFI says turnaround of UPS Freight successor running ahead of schedule

Once-struggling LTL business to post operating ratio below 95% under new ownership

UPS Freight struggled to be profitable before TFI acquired it. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

TFI International’s turnaround of UPS Freight is running ahead of schedule, the company said Tuesday as it announced that it expects the LTL business, now called TForce Freight, to post an adjusted operating ratio below 95% for the second quarter. 

TFI (NYSE:TFII) provided no details in what marks an unusual preannouncement ahead of the release of its second-quarter financial results on July 26. But the improvement in margins for the division “is consistent with companywide strong performance during the quarter.”  

The Montreal-based trucking and logistics firm has previously provided expectations that TForce Freight’s margins would improve to 96%-97% percent within a year. 

Instead, the division beat that target, and it happened only two months after the $800 million acquisition closed on April 30. While it might seem remarkably quick, working in TFI’s favor has been a red-hot U.S. LTL market. 


UPS Freight was largely unprofitably under UPS’ ownership. TFI CEO Alain Bedard told analysts that his company’s plans for the LTL operation boiled down to making it “lean and mean,” which included renegotiating rates with shippers. 

The acquisition is TFI’s largest to date. It added 6,300 trucks and 14,500 employees, including 11,500 Teamsters members. 

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7 Comments

  1. Tcs53

    Hahaha,what nonsense! You fudge a few numbers to make your O/R look good. Big deal. Let’s face facts, UPS is the gold standard when it comes to trucking. Not only for the drivers but for investors. They couldn’t make it work because you’re still dealing with Overnite personnel and terminals that are dilapidated. $800 million for an LTL carrier is chicken feed. Buster Brown is happy to get rid of them.

  2. Ca_freight

    Perhaps they are “turning it around” but it’s definitely at the expense of the customer. Absolutely horrible service since the merger, they undercut other carriers and couldn’t handle the volume.

  3. Ryan Liotta

    That’s awesome what TFI has done but what truly needs to improve is the culture & leadership of what UPS freight left the moan focus is focusing on the employees & it’s leaders. I just don’t understand why you would keep leader form a failed business before. TForce freight Dallas is the cancer of this company

  4. anonymous

    Don’t believe this trend will stick. They never have answers. They’ve not integrated their tracking platform. Talking to the former UPS Freight team members morale is sinking. They’ve somehow “misplaced” an extremely high value pallet for well over a week, but every day state they “will have the security team get back to me by 3:30 tomorrow”.

    A senior terminal employee just yesterday told me that if it’s not idiot proof, the pricing team in the Philippines won’t actually bill the load, and that’s when things get “misplaced”. The advice I received was just to dumb down the BOL, regardless of what’s actually on it. That will “allow” them to bill and suddenly the tracking system will start working.

    My advice is to just use FedEx freight.

  5. Jeff

    Not sure how, they never show up, staff is rude, the customer service is beyond horrible. We went to FedEx all the way and we told our customers to not use them when shipping to us.

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Nate Tabak

Nate Tabak is a Toronto-based journalist and producer who covers cybersecurity and cross-border trucking and logistics for FreightWaves. He spent seven years reporting stories in the Balkans and Eastern Europe as a reporter, producer and editor based in Kosovo. He previously worked at newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the San Jose Mercury News. He graduated from UC Berkeley, where he studied the history of American policing. Contact Nate at [email protected].