Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (ODFL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Old Dominion Freight Line Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jack Atkins, Director, Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today through February 12, 2025, by dialing 1 (877) 344-7529, access code 3755692. The replay of the webcast may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements in the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements among others, regarding Old Dominion's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not forward-looking statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in this morning's news release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please note that prior period share and per share data discussed on today's conference call have also been adjusted to reflect our March 2024 2-for-1 stock split. As a final note before we begin. We welcome your questions today, [Operator Instructions]. At this time for opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference call over to the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Marty Freeman. Marty, please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. With me on the call today is Adam Satterfield, our CFO. And after some brief remarks, we'll be more than happy to take your questions. Old Dominion's fourth quarter financial results reflect continued softness in the domestic economy. While our revenue declined 7.3% in the quarter, due to a decrease in our volumes, our market share remained relatively consistent, while we continue to strengthen our customer relationships. Although our fourth quarter earnings per diluted share of $1.23 represents a 16.3% decrease compared to the same period a year ago. I'm proud of how our team continued to deliver superior service while also operating very efficiently despite headwinds from lower density. The past few years have been full of challenges with our industry, especially given the sluggish macroeconomic environment that has continued far longer than most of us would have anticipated. Through all of this, we have remained committed to the key elements of our proven long-term strategic plan, and I would like to thank our OD family of employees for unwavering dedication to our core strategic priorities. While we have focused on what we can control, providing superior customer service, remaining disciplined in our approach to pricing and controlling our cost by maximizing our operating efficiencies and minimizing our discretionary spending, we have also continued to invest in our network, our technology and our people as we -- the strength in our balance sheet allows us to remain focused on long-term market share opportunities. The consistency of our execution through the ups and downs of the economic cycle has been a key element in our ability to win market share through the years. Our customers know they can rely on us to be there for them and help them keep their promises to their customers. I'm proud to report that, once again, the case in the fourth quarter as we provided our customers with 99% on-time service and a cargo claims ratio below 0.1%. By consistently providing our customers with best-in-class service, we are adding value to their business, which in turn supports our yield management initiatives. Our long-term consistent approach to pricing, which focuses on individual customer profitability is designed to help offset our cost inflation and support future investments in our capacity and technology. In the face of this challenging demand environment, our team has worked hard to control our costs and preserve our profitability by looking for ways to operate as efficiently as possible. As a result, over the past 2 years, our direct operating expenses have declined as a percentage of revenue despite headwinds from lower network density and continued cost inflation. This shows the flexibility of our network as well as the commitment of our entire team to match our direct operating costs to our business levels. Importantly, our efforts to control costs have not prevented us from continuing to invest in our business for long term. We spent $771 million on capital expenditures in 2024 which follows the $757 million in capital spending we executed in 2023. These figures include $664 million we have invested over the 2-year period in the ongoing expansion of our service center network. We opened 4 new service centers in 2024, and we also have several other facilities under construction or nearly complete that we can open quickly once the demand environment supports it. We have over 30% excess capacity in our service center network, but we know how quickly the market can change. These ongoing investments have created some short-term headwinds to our overhead expenses due to higher depreciation cost. That said, we are willing to incur these costs in the short term so that we are in a position to grow with our customers and support them while the capacity and technology they will require in the years ahead. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our OD family of employees, I'm cautiously optimistic as we start the fiscal new year. While we cannot predict what we will see in the inflection in demand, we are well positioned to respond to an improved operating environment when it materializes. Over the past decade, our consistent execution and commitment to superior service has allowed Old Dominion to win more market share than any other LTL carrier. We are confident that by continuing to implement our proven strategic plan, we are positioned to continue to win market share and drive increased value for our shareholders over the long term. I appreciate you joining us this morning, and now Adam will discuss our fourth quarter in greater detail. Adam?

Thank you, Marty, and good morning. Old Dominion's revenue totaled $1.39 billion for the fourth quarter of 2024, which was a 7.3% decrease from the prior year. Our revenue results reflect an 8.2% decrease in LTL tons per day and a 0.4% decrease in LTL revenue per hundredweight. We also had 1 extra workday as compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. On a sequential basis, our revenue per day for the fourth quarter decreased 2.7% when compared to the third quarter of 2024, with LTL tons per day decreasing 3.0% and LTL shipments per day decreasing 4.6%. For comparison, the 10-year average sequential change for these metrics includes a decrease of 0.3% in revenue per day, a decrease of 1.2% in LTL tons per day and a decrease of 2.9% in LTL shipments per day. The monthly sequential changes in LTL tons per day during the fourth quarter were as follows: October decreased 3.0% as compared to September, November increased 0.7% as compared to October and December decreased 4.0% as compared to November. The 10-year average change for these respective months is a decrease of 3.1% in October, an increase of 3.1% in November and a decrease of 7.2% in December. For January, our revenue per day decreased by 4.2% when compared to January of 2024 due to a 7.1% decrease in our LTL tons per day that was partially offset by an increase in our LTL revenue per hundredweight. LTL revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel surcharges, increased 4.5% in January. Our operating ratio increased 410 basis points to 75.9% for the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in our revenue had a deleveraging effect on many of our operating expenses during the quarter which contributed to approximately a 300-basis point increase in our overhead cost as a percent of revenue. Within our overhead cost, our miscellaneous expenses as a percent of revenue increased 110 basis points due primarily to lower gains recorded on the disposal of property and equipment during the fourth quarter of 2024. We generally expect our miscellaneous expenses to average approximately 0.5% of revenue. So these costs were more normalized in the fourth quarter of 2024. Our direct operating costs, which are generally variable in nature, also increased as a percent of revenue when compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. Contributing to the increase in cost was a 100-basis point increase in our insurance and claims expense as a percent of revenue, which was primarily due to changes in the adjustment recorded for our annual third-party actuarial review of accident claims. We were otherwise pleased with our team's effort to control our direct operating expenses in relation to current business levels, while also maintaining tight control over discretionary spending. Old Dominion's cash flow from operations totaled $401.1 million for the fourth quarter and $1.7 billion for the year, respectively, while capital expenditures were $170.9 million and $771.3 million for the same periods. We utilized $142.5 million and $967.3 million of cash for our share repurchase program during the fourth quarter and the year, respectively, while our cash dividends totaled $55.4 million and $223.6 million for the same periods. We were pleased that our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend of $0.28 per share for the first quarter of 2025, which represents a 7.7% increase compared to the quarterly cash dividend paid in the first quarter of 2024. Our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2024 was 21.5% as compared to 24.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023. We currently expect our effective tax rate to be 24.8% for the first quarter of 2025. This concludes our prepared remarks this morning. Operator, we'll be happy to open the floor for questions at this time.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Jason Seidl with TD Cowen.

Marty, you guys talked about tonnage being down 7.1% here in January, but it's obviously been all over the news about the really bad winter weather conditions in parts of the country that, quite frankly, aren't prepared for bad winter weather. How should we think about sort of that tonnage number going forward as we move throughout the quarter? Should we expect that to get a little bit better? Or how much was weather impacted?

Well, we go through bad weather every January and February, it seems like in my career. And we get most of that revenue back when customers are closed down due to bad weather or because the carriers can't pick it up. It usually comes back in a couple of days. Some of it could be moved over to full truckload if they're able to build a full load from the shippers' dock. But most of that comes back. But, to answer your question, it would depend upon what the weather is going forward. We had some unusual weather here in the South where we live, and we've never seen cold temperatures like that. We had a couple of snows, but I don't look for that to be a big issue with us going forward from a weather standpoint. And so I'm optimistic we're almost out of the woods. It was 70 degrees here yesterday. So we love that.

Well, we're getting the bad weather up here. Could you guys give us any numbers in terms of the amount of terminals that you guys had to close down in January, maybe versus the prior January to give us a better feel.

We don't normally get into that level of detail, Jason. But we obviously -- we had service centers that were disrupted, as Marty said, and I think we always think about trucking as outdoor sport. And so when we look at things like our 10-year averages, there's going to be bad weather that's built into to those 10-year averages and so forth. And we had bad weather in there in January last year. But we were pretty pleased with how we performed and what our volumes looked like in January overall relative to December. Our tonnage was a little bit under. We used the 5-year average in December and January. We outperformed the 5-year average in December by about 100 basis points, and we underperformed by about 100 basis points at 5-year average in January and we usually look at the 10-year average going forward. So tonnage 10-year average would be up about 1.5% in February over January and then the 10-year average in March would be 4.9%. So I think the key would be just we continue to perform and look and see how business levels build throughout the month of February. And obviously, we'll give our mid-quarter update as normal. And then do we see this optimism we're hearing from customers and things like ISM, finally going above 50. Do those things really translate into increased business levels and see the acceleration that you would otherwise typically see or what we have seen over the last 10 years.

The next question comes from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs.

I guess maybe it makes sense to sort of ask, since we talked about tonnage, a little bit on the operating ratio and putting all the puts and takes together with tonnage and trends in January, how you're thinking about 4Q to 1Q seasonality on OR?

Yes. From an operating ratio standpoint, normally, we'd expect about 100 to 150 basis point sequential increase in the fourth -- first quarter relative to the fourth. For this year, I'm expecting that we'll probably be up kind of flat -- be flat to up 50 basis points in the first quarter relative to the fourth. And we've got that insurance that was called out in the press release, we should see some improvement in those costs as a percent of revenue I'd expect those costs to be closer to about 1.5% of revenue in the first quarter. So that kind of otherwise would offset that normal sequential increase that we'd see. And so kind of that flat to up 50. I still think we got a little bit of risk to revenue in terms of -- we're not quite yet there. We haven't had a period where we've been on that seasonality for a full quarter. So we'll see what transpires as we continue to go through the rest of this quarter. But if we have a little underperformance there than that puts a little bit more pressure on our overhead cost. I'm also expecting that our op supplies and expenses as a percent of revenue will be a little bit higher in the first quarter relative to the fourth as well. So -- but just like we did in the fourth quarter, I was really pleased with our performance there. We outperformed on a core basis what otherwise that normal seasonality would have been despite what the top line dictated for us there. And I think that just is a testament to our team and the focus that we have every day on managing our operating efficiencies and continuing to keep our belts as tight as we can in controlling discretionary spending. So had very good cost performance and control through 4Q and I would expect that we'll see some of that continue into the first quarter here until we really get back to more of a robust revenue environment.

The next question comes from Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo.

Maybe if I could ask on pricing, kind of get a sense of maybe how you're seeing the environment. Fourth quarter revenue per hundredweight came in reasonably good and it sounds like maybe a little bit of an acceleration in 1Q, but could you maybe help us sort of understand a little bit what's going on from a pricing perspective, what you're seeing in the market?

Yes. We're still getting good price increases. The revenue per hundredweight came right in line with pretty much that range that we gave for the fourth quarter. It was up 3.8%, excluding the fuel surcharge. And so we were right kind of in line with where we thought we'd be from a normal seasonality standpoint, starting out in good shape at the beginning of the quarter with what we've seen thus far in January being up 4.5%, but normal seasonality would be -- we'd be up about 3.6% to 4% in the first quarter, so we'll see. We saw a little bit of a drop in weight per shipment from December into January that kind of helped that metric. I'm hopeful that we'll see that weight per shipment reaccelerate. And that's pretty standard to see January's weight per shipment be a little bit lower. But hopefully, we'll see that accelerate as we go through the quarter, that would be more indicative of an improving economic environment. But yes, that's kind of what we've seen thus far and at this point through January outperforming that range that we somewhat expect from a normal seasonality standpoint.

The next question comes from Jon Chappell with Evercore ISI.

Marty mentioned in his prepared remarks, several other service centers that are under construction or near completion. As we think about the outlook for this year, maybe not identifying the inflection yet, do we expect 4 service centers or less for 2025? And if we do get that inflection in the second half of the year, customer optimism seems to be on point, how many service centers are pretty close that you can bring on pretty quickly to kind of keep the spare capacity where you'd like for it to be?

Yes. A lot of that is going to be demand driven, Jon. We're at 261 service centers today. And we continue to execute on our long-term CapEx plan really over the balance of the last couple of years, like Marty mentioned. And so we had 4 openings overall last year. And as we look out this year, we're a little north of 30% from an excess capacity standpoint. So unless demand really dictates, we don't have to open any in that regard, and we would be diligent in looking at the properties that we may finish construction on and making that decision operationally whether or not we want to turn that new location on, if you will. And there's a lot of cost that goes hand-in-hand with a service center opening. It's not just the facility cost themselves, but it's working them into an operational plan and the impact of line-haul operations and all the other incremental costs. So all of those would be factored into the decision as to whether or not we would want to open. But we've got I think several that are near completion now, and I think we would have several more. So that we could finish here in 2025. So that number that you mentioned, we could open that many if demand dictated, but we're just going to be sort of prudent with making those decisions. But what we can say is, I think we've done -- continued to execute according to what our long-term plan has been, and that's making the investments ahead of the anticipated growth curve. We're confident in our continued opportunities ahead for market share. And we want to make sure that we've prepared our network and our people to be ready when those volumes do, in fact, return to us and should return at very strong incremental margins. So that's something that we're in great shape for and we'll continue to evaluate those projects, but we can handle a lot of business right now and -- but we want to be prepared. You think back to how things change quickly. In 2021, 2022, we put on a cumulative $2 billion of revenue over that 2-year period. So I think we're in a great spot from a network standpoint that we could go through a robust economic expansion and put on a lot of good strong revenue.

And Jon, to add to Adam's comments, 2 of those facilities that we're working on now and trying to complete our hub facilities, which will actually lower our cost in the future from a line-haul standpoint. So we're still -- we're very excited that those things are near completion, and that will give us some further savings down the road.

The next question comes from Daniel Imbro with Stephens.

Maybe to follow up on an earlier comment you made. So demand has remained muted, but we did see PMI kind of return to expansion this month. Can you just talk about how long it typically takes for that to show up in terms of more shipments moving through the network? And what are the earliest parts of your business that do typically inflect higher in the cycle? Are you seeing any encouraging demand from those customers when you look across your portfolio?

Yes. We actually, in the fourth quarter, saw our industrial business for the first time in a while, outperformed our retail-related business. And the revenue performance with those industrial-related customers is actually a little bit better than the overall company performance. And I think that kind of goes hand-in-hand with the enthusiasm that we're hearing from customers today. And albeit it's -- everyone, I think, is being a little bit cautious with it. But we saw the acceleration in ISM in December and didn't quite break the 50 threshold. But we felt like based on customer conversations that we would see it bust through 50 in January, and that's where it ended up being. So I think that we'll just continue to stay engaged with those customers and obviously be there for them when they need us. And we'd love to see increased business levels with our industrial-related customers. Typically, it's a couple of months' lag when we see that performance with ISM in terms of the acceleration coming through, I'd say, for the industry overall. But certainly, we're in a great spot to take those increased shipments if they materialize.

The next question comes from Eric Morgan with Barclays.

I wanted to ask another on the operating ratio. Just given the cost performance this year and where you see pricing trending, and I don't know, maybe you see a little bit of D&A or less of a D&A drag with CapEx coming down, do you think you can get to the margin improvement this year if we are kind of in a steady-state macro? Or do you think you need to see some positive inflection here?

Well, I definitely think that's going to be dependent on the top line revenue. And we've talked about a lot of the OR degradation that we saw this past year that really was in the overhead expenses line. We actually generated, it was slight, but just a little bit of improvement in our direct cost as a percent of revenue for the full year. So I was really pleased again with our ability to control what was controllable in a low-density environment while actually improving our service standards. So that's a testament to our operations team for how they handled and managed through this year. But -- so really pleased with that, but we did see the inflation there in those overhead costs. And they've been averaging about $300 million per quarter overall, plus or minus kind of $5 million when you go through that allocation. So we've got to get back to a point where we've got some top line growth. I think that if we can see some return to seasonality then that's certainly possible. I think if you match seasonality or kind of trace it through the 4 quarters of this year, I can see back to -- or you get into the back half of the year in particular, fourth quarter, you can see some nice improvement overall in revenue. And I think that if we do our job and continue to control our cost, it's certainly possible to get back to an environment where we can have some improvement. But I kind of look at this is it's going to be a multiyear type of story in the sense of when I think we see the economy really rebound and you go back to some prior periods like 2017, 2018, it's going to happen at some point, and it's called a cycle for a reason, right? So whenever it does come through, what's the leverage can we get on the revenue growth. And I think we can look at the breakdown of our operating ratio for the year and think that if our total direct cost for the year were between 52%, 53% of revenue overheads, 20% to 21% of revenue, you run the math, that's a pretty strong incremental margin if we can just manage those 2 components. And that's where we'd expect to get the most leverage. If our overhead costs are about 21% of revenue. They've been 16%, 17% before, so we can swing that pendulum back to the lower end of that kind of 500-basis point range that we tend to trade in and see some really strong performance that should get us right back eventually towards our goal of producing an annual operating ratio below 70%.

The next question comes from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan.

So I just want to come back to the NMFTA. They're working through some changes to the class system. The proposal was out late last week. So I got your thoughts on this last time, but I want to come to -- I know you mentioned a vast majority of your freight already, but now that we've seen a little bit more on the table in terms of the proposal, what do you think the implications are for yourselves, for shippers and for the broader industry, assuming this goes forward as proposed?

Yes. I personally think it's a big to do about nothing really because basically what they're wanting to do is go from a class rating system to a density and cube rating system. So that doesn't necessarily mean that the shippers have to do that overnight. They have the choice to go to that if they want. So I don't see that being a big deal and how that will affect the carriers. Certainly, we would like to work towards that because it gives the carriers a better system to rate the shipments and cost of shipments, but I think it's probably a lot of hype over nothing for the time being.

The next question comes from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America.

Just maybe -- it just sounds like a deceleration in the market, if you're saying you're maintaining share volumes down 7%, 8% versus I think you were talking maybe more mid-single digits last quarter. Can you talk about that and your market share, you usually maintain at this point in the downturn, you only get the pickup in the upturns. And then, Adam, just a real quick clarification. I think you mentioned OR up 50 to 100 basis points. I thought last time you had mentioned the normal 1Q seasonality was 100 to 150. So does that mean you're looking to beat historical trends? Or has the historical trend changed? Or -- just trying to get an update there.

Yes. Let me make sure I clarify that. So the normal increase is 100 to 150 basis points. And I was saying that we should be flat to up 50 basis points from the reported operating ratio in the fourth quarter. And part of that is the benefit of that insurance and claims expense that was 2.9% of revenue in the fourth quarter, we expect that to revert back to around 1.5% in the first quarter. So you got some benefit there and then some increases that I had mentioned earlier. But you're right, the normal average is 100 to 150 basis points of an increase there. In regards to your market share commentary, I think that the thing that we've been looking at overall, obviously, there was a lot of disruption over the last couple of years. We're trying to look at share of -- just comparing the publicly traded carriers. So we've had to try to look more at the entire universe and some of the data that we get that includes private carriers overall. And so we would say that in '23 and '24 as well, from all the information we get, it looks like we have maintained market share, and that's effectively what we target doing in a weaker economic period. We want to maintain our market share, continue to maintain discipline with regards to our yield management philosophy as well and then be in a good spot to start growing when the market does again. And I think that's what you see in the expansionary markets. We've outperformed the -- at least the public carriers by anywhere from 600 to 800 basis points, if you will. So I think that we'll see that play out again. And only time will tell in terms of how the others are able to reshuffle capacity, if you will, and when the market continues to improve and the freight comes back, overall with the industry volumes are down probably about 15% versus where we were in 2021, 2022. So I think that's created some of this capacity that's out there, but it will be all about who can control it without any type of growing pains. And I referenced it earlier, but we put on $2 billion of revenue cumulatively over that '21 and '22 period. So I think we've got a proven team that can go out and execute and put on a significant amount of revenue growth. That would be a top 10 carrier just putting it on organically if -- at least what we did in '21 and '22.

The next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research.

Adam, last quarter, you sort of gave us a range of revenue outcomes. I don't know -- for Q4. I don't know if you have a similar thought around Q1. I'm just trying to understand if is revenue starting to outperform seasonality? Or if this is just sort of -- the OR comment is more about sort of the Q4 starting point? And then the yields ex fuel are sounds like accelerating a little bit in January versus Q4. Is that a mix dynamic? Or is that pricing starting to reaccelerate again?

Yes. So in the first quarter this year we -- to start, we've got 1 less operating day. We'll have 63 days in the first quarter this year versus 64 last year. But I guess the way I framed up revenue last quarter was kind of creating, okay, if we perform that seasonality, what would that look like? And if we did that in the first quarter, I think we'd be at $1.38 billion of all-in revenue in the first quarter. But then kind of on the other side, I gave, if we -- in the fourth quarter, I gave if we underperformed seasonality like we had in the third and the fourth quarter, what would that lower end of revenue range look like. And we did perform a little bit better in the fourth quarter than we did in 2Q and 3Q relative to what our 10-year averages were. But if we underperform seasonality kind of at that same pace of the fourth quarter, then first quarter revenue would be $1.34 billion. So maybe said more succinctly, somewhere $1.34 billion, $1.38 billion would put us somewhere in normal seasonality range to kind of consistent underperformance like we had in 4Q. And I think that, that's kind of like I was saying earlier, it's just we've -- typically, you see a big acceleration in revenue, it starts here in February and then a big acceleration in March. And so that's still yet to be determined if we'll see that type of seasonal increase. We're cautiously optimistic, I would say, in the sense that we felt like a year ago when we were sitting here, we felt like we were going to see things turn to the positive. So we're being diligent and preparing for it, but we definitely want to see it transpiring before we get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of talking about what the top line and the operating ratio might otherwise be. And then -- yes, I think that yield question that you asked, just to kind of follow on to what I said earlier, it's up 4.5%. The normal seasonality would imply that revenue per hundredweight ex fuel would be up 3.6% to 4%. So it was a little bit of a drop-off in our weight per shipment from December to January. So a little bit of mix that kind of helped that number. But like I mentioned earlier, I'd rather see our weight per shipment increasing and put pressure on that number naturally then -- and get us back into that range, if you will, because that would be more of a sign on the economy is getting better, and we should see that follow through both with weight and shipment velocity as well. But we continue to do our thing in terms of executing on our long-term yield management philosophies and looking at individual account profitability and just trying to achieve increases that offset our costs but also continue to support the investments in new service centers and new technologies that ultimately are designed to improve our customer service or enhance operating efficiencies that ultimately will allow us to better serve our customers.

The next question comes from Bruce Chan with Stifel.

Maybe just to get thoughts around the big competitor spin-off that was announced at the end of the year last year, I know there's a pretty long runway on that, but maybe you could give us some color on how you see that affecting the competitive dynamic if it's maybe increasing on the margins or if you're confident that there's enough opportunity for everybody with a potential cycle recovery?

Yes. I think that -- not to speak for another company. But I mean that company, we've been competing with for years. And so it's something that we'll have to continue to keep watch of and see what their new go-to-market strategy might be if there is any change to it. But I think otherwise, as a stand-alone and brighter light maybe shining on the business, I would expect to see continued discipline there. But I think that we've got a -- when you look at us compared to each of our larger national nonunion companies. You look on the Mastio surveys, and we've won the Mastio Quality Award for 16 years in a row and that's something that we continue to focus on. We want to stay as the industry leader there in terms of total service, but better yet the ultimate value that we can deliver to our customers. And so I think it's that value proposition that really gives us the opportunity to keep [ gaining ] share as we look out into the future. We've won more market share than anyone else over the last 10 years, and we think we're better positioned than anyone to win more market share than anyone else going forward. But I think the opportunity is there for the industry, like we've said time and time again, there's opportunity for more than just us to grow. And we've been competing with other carriers for years that have been trying to grow their business, and we've been able to compete very effectively. And I still believe that we're a capacity-constrained industry. I think it was commonly understood that our industry was capacity constrained in 2022. And I think that's something that's almost like daylight savings time. You can't -- the old saying about taking 2 inches off a blanket and sewing it on the other end of the blanket doesn't give you a longer blanket. And when you had a carrier that exited the business and only half of their service centers have been reallocated to other carriers just because the logo changed on the door doesn't mean there's more capacity in the industry, it's actually less. So I think when we see volumes actually normalize and start growing again and taking advantage of the e-commerce opportunities, near-shoring opportunities, freight that lends itself to LTL movement. I think that's when you'll see the entire industry start to grow again and us winning more than our share of the market.

The next question comes from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna.

You talked earlier about looking at your market share from a broader data set, including some of the private carriers. Can you talk about what segments of the market you think are gaining and losing share now that we've kind of settled out from all the noise of the Yellow redeployment and the [ Estes ] cyber-attack that were in comps for a while?

Yes. I mean it's kind of hard to parse through and we don't get that granular detail for us in the industry, but we get a lot of detail and continue to see consistent performance throughout each of our operating regions. And I think we've seen, in some cases, the retail had been outperforming and that was somewhat related to the weakness of the industrial market. And ISM had been below 50 for 25 out of 26 months, I think. So we saw that reflected in our business levels over the last couple of years. But all in all, as we've talked on each call, we've been able to maintain customer relationships, and we've not really lost any major customer accounts. It's just our customers have had fewer shipments to tender to us. But I think that that's probably allowed us to maybe see that better performance on the retail side. As you go forward, though, I think that we should see our industrial business start picking back up again. We have already started seeing business with -- that's managed by third-party logistics companies. That business is performing better over the last couple of quarters. And it's also -- we've seen an increase in weight per shipment with those 3PL customers as well. So we've talked before about we feel like, and Marty mentioned it, about some consolidation of loads that have probably moved into the truckload world and shippers taking advantage of that environment where the capacity was there, and the rates were really low. It seems like maybe the rate environment is improving a little bit in truckload. And so we'd expect some of that freight should swing right back into LTL. So I think we've got multiple fronts that should create some volume opportunities, be it continued growth with 3PLs, the industrial strengthening, the overall industry strengthening and that truckload market as it gets better, that's going to create LTL opportunities. But also, we've got a structural advantage against our other competitors. Many of our competitors use an awful lot of truckload substitution for their line-haul network. And so when that rate environment starts increasing, their costs will be increasing. So they typically have to raise rates much higher than us in that type of environment. So I think that's going to create some volume opportunities for us as well.

And if I could ask a brief follow-up. There's a lot of focus on the largest player in the space as they become a stand-alone business over the next 12-plus months. How do you make sure you retain your talent as they're looking for new leadership?

I think -- I'll answer that question. I think that you have to maintain that doing the same thing we've done for years, and that's OD family culture. We treat our employees, our sales reps very well. We pay them well. They have quarterly incentives, and I'm not overly concerned that that's going to affect us in any way.

The next question comes from Tom Wadewitz with UBS.

This is Mike Triano on for Tom. So as we think about potential improvement in the macro, how do you view the impact of weight per shipment increasing on revenue per shipment. I imagine it's not a one-for-one impact, but is there a rule of thumb where you say 50% or 60% of the increase in weight flows through to higher revenue per shipment, all else equal? Just wondering how we should be thinking about that.

Yes. That's a hard one to answer when you're spreading it over 50,000 shipments per day. But I think, generally speaking, obviously, the improvement that we see in weight per shipment leads to increased revenue per shipment. And so generally, that's going to be better for the bottom line, if you will. The cost, all things considered, if it's just a few more widgets on every pallet, the cost to handle might stay the same. But it's -- I don't know that there's necessarily a one-for-one relationship that we can share. Overall, it obviously will be a good thing and we've been suffering, our weight per shipment has been pretty low in January, we were at 1,489 pounds and back in the 2021, 2022 and prior expansionary type periods, we've been around 1,600 pounds. And so there's a lot of good things that come with that higher weight per shipment. It translates into the better line-haul efficiency. There's just a lot of efficiencies that come with that increased weight. So it's something that we certainly will continue to watch. And like I mentioned earlier, that's usually a good sign on an improving economy overall, and typically will lead into increased shipments with customers as well. And so just all kind of works to our advantage from a leverage standpoint.

The next question comes from Ari Rosa with Citigroup.

So I wanted to ask about inflationary cost pressures. Maybe you could just discuss kind of what you're seeing across the board, particularly insurance, we've heard from a number of carriers that they're seeing a lot of pressure on that insurance line item. And obviously, here in the fourth quarter, you saw a little bit of a step-up there, which sounds like it goes back in first quarter, but maybe kind of from a structural standpoint, you could talk about just where you're seeing inflationary cost pressures, level of confidence to get that back in pricing? And then just a clarifying question, if I could, on Bascome's question. I wanted to make sure -- I understand there are not noncompete clauses or anything like that with regard to any employees, whether senior management or salespeople. Or is it just a function of the culture and the comp being sufficient that you're confident you can kind of retain the talent that you have?

Yes. Let me see if I can keep up with everything there. But from an inflationary standpoint, we ended up last year about where we thought we'd be from a core cost inflation. We had anticipated that after a couple of years of increases that we would see things kind of revert back closer to our long-term average, which would be cost per shipment in the 3.5% to 4% range. So we were a little north of that overall in '24 and kind of expect to see a little bit higher cost inflation in '25 as well. Thinking it may be more in that kind of 4% to 4.5% type of range. So just a little north of that longer-term average. But that's something that we'll continue to work on, obviously. But we've been seeing inflation in many items, health care cost, fringe benefit cost overall, I would expect to see a little bit increase there. The insurance specifically that you had asked about, that's been a challenge for years in the transportation industry for large companies in particular, and I think it hits the entire LTL industry but probably the large truckload carriers as well. It's been incredibly difficult to maintain the insurance levels that we like to have. We've taken increased premium cost in the double-digit range for probably the past 6 years, and that's taken on a little bit more self-insured risk as well. And so -- but that's something that we always try to manage through and our team, legal and risk, has done a great job to be able to continue to maintain the insurance coverage that we do have in place. But it's something where our accident frequency ratios are at an all-time best. And we obviously invest in a lot of equipment on our trucks to try to mitigate accidents, and we invest an awful lot of money in training our people as well for safe driving practices. So that's definitely a key to our foundation for success. But that's something that I think continues to be a challenge until we can see tort reform in this country. And it's something that at some point has got to happen, it's just -- it's crazy, some of the cases that you can kind of read about that have happened to some of the carriers out there.

And our staff turnover, to answer that question for you is less than 1% a year. And most of that comes from retirements or promotions into operations or management. And it's not unusual for us to have other competitors to seek our salespeople, and they're smart to do that because our salespeople are trained to sell value service and not price, and we're proud of that fact. So again, we hang on to our salespeople. They love working at Old Dominion because we treat them fair and pay them well. So that's the least of my concerns is losing our salespeople to a competitor.

The next question comes from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just a quick follow-up on the insurance question. Is there anything more you guys can do from a balance sheet deployment standpoint to maybe kind of do more of that in-house? Or have you sort of maxed out how much you can do there internally to maybe offset some of that inflation with third-party insurers? And also quickly to follow up, I think, Adam, you said earlier that -- you pointed out that only half of the Yellow volume had come back online and so that's a net reduction in capacity, but you have also seen a lot of organic capacity growth in the industry over the last year and into 2025. Are you concerned that, that might come in and backfill for the Yellow capacity that's not yet come back online?

Well, I think it's something that, obviously, we'll continue to watch what's going on in the industry. And like we've said, I think it's going to take going through an up cycle to really prove. This is not the first time that in my career that I've heard that other carriers are wanting to grow or they're adding capacity, and the growth story is going to be over. I can recall hearing that back in 2016, and we've done a pretty nice job of being able to grow revenue from that point forward. But it's something that we obviously pay close attention to and -- but a lot of our confidence about market share comes from customer conversations more than anything, staying in front of our customers, knowing how their business levels are changing, what their strategies going forward are going to be and how we can add value to their supply chains. And so we don't add capacity until we're confident that we're going to be growing in the markets where we're expanding, and that's always been a key part of our expansion strategy. So I think that let's get into the up cycle. And then that's probably going to be the easiest answer to talk about where is industry capacity versus what our industry volume is looking like. But I don't see any change when we look forward in terms of what our market share potential might be now versus the thinking that we had in place back in 2021, 2022. So we still feel like we've got a long runway for growth and tremendous amount of opportunity out there ahead of us. And in regards to the insurance question, I think we've done a really nice job in terms of managing those insurance costs. When you look at insurance and claims, on the income statement. It's pretty much been anywhere from 1.1% to 1.3% of revenue if you look back over the last kind of 5, 10 years, if you will, and it's something like I mentioned that we have had to take on some increased exposure in terms of what our self-insured retention limits are. And that's something that we spend a lot of time going through and planning with our legal and risk teams to looking at and evaluating what type of risk do we want to take as we build out our insurance tower. And so there's a lot of strategy that goes in behind that. And obviously, there's no perfect answer. You look at things in hindsight and say, okay, we did this, and here was the result. This year, we just had a bigger step up in terms of the annual actuarial assessment that we completed in the fourth quarter and took a little bit larger entry, if you will, to adjust those existing reserves on existing claims. But we do expect -- I think last year, we averaged about 1.2% of revenue for the insurance and claims. And I think that's probably going to go up to closer to the 1.5% like I mentioned. So we'll see a little more inflation there. But all in all, I think we've done a very effective job of managing our cost for our insurance program. The other interesting thing that what goes in that line and where you've seen it improve over the long term is that insurance and claims line, that's our auto accident claims as well as our cargo claims ratio. And our cargo claims ratio, which we've talked about for years how we've generated improvement there and had got that balance down to 0.1%. It actually rounds to 0.0 for this quarter, we just said below 0.1% but we talked about wanting to be on-time and claims-free. And in the fourth quarter, we were essentially claims-free, so very proud of that achievement for the team as well. And it takes an awful a lot of investment in claims prevention and training and execution, but it's something we're really proud of.

I wanted to ask you if you can get better than 0.0.

The next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies.

Great. This is Joe Hafling on for Stephanie Moore. Maybe more of a thematic question. You mentioned maybe the tailwind of nearshoring. How do you guys view the Old Dominion network in relation to potentially sort of nearshore or onshore production and manufacturing facilities? And maybe a curveball question, but we've been so focused on the organic growth front. Is there anything from an M&A standpoint as you guys look at the future of LTL that would maybe excite you in terms of beefing up your service offerings?

Yes. M&A hasn't been a priority for us. Our last acquisition was 2008. So we just feel like we've been able to grow organically with really strong return on invested capital. And so that will most likely be the focus as we go forward, being focused on what we do best, which is LTL transportation and again, like I've said earlier, I think there's a lot of opportunity for the industry. And certainly, we feel like we can benefit the most given the quality of our network, the quality of our service and a value proposition that's unmatched in our industry. And to that end, we've got 261 service centers throughout the U.S. So we cover all locations, all ZIP codes and so as plants are being built or expanded in the U.S., creates an awful lot of opportunity. It creates opportunity on the inbound side where we're hauling parts and pieces and chemicals and so forth, raw material inputs for the manufacturing process. And then we've got the opportunity on the outbound side to take those finished goods and allow the shipper to leverage our LTL network. We can drop a trailer at a customer location, they fill it, and it's seamless through our LTL network to get it to all points around the U.S., wherever their distribution centers or customer base might be. So a lot of opportunity on both inbound and outbound as we see the potential for more manufacturing in the U.S. or even from a nearshoring standpoint, if there is more in Canada or Mexico or whatnot, we can get those goods as they come cross-border instead of goods coming into a port, it's more likely that we would get them cross-border and the freight could stay within an LTL network to get to final destination versus being in a railcar and being pulled maybe to the middle part of the country before we would get our hands on it. So it just creates a little bit more opportunity across all fronts.

Got it. And just on this topic, how much is cross-border as a percent of revenue for you guys? Could you remind me?

Yes. It's a pretty small percentage overall, less than 5%.

The next question comes from Tyler Brown with Raymond James.

You guys obviously covered a lot. But Marty, do you think -- it's a little bit of an off-the-wall question, but do you think that the change in the administration could be an opportunity for the ATA or really the broader LTL industry to revisit the broader use of triples. I know that you used them out west, but that seems like a sizable opportunity, surmised line-haul is probably your largest functional cost bucket.

Yes. I think that -- Tyler, I think that's yet to be seen by the new administration. I do see some positive things down the road for the new administration. Taxes is one of them. But as it relates to triples, other than Pacific Northwest, that's yet to be unseen. I think that's something that they talk about all the time at the ATA. I'm not sure how easy that will be to do. One of the hub centers I mentioned earlier that we're building now will be able to haul Rocky Mountain doubles on the turnpike, which will help our line-haul from that aspect. But I think the jury is still out for triples in other areas. But hopefully, I would like to see that in some of the less congested areas in the future.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marty Freeman for any closing remarks.

Thank you, guys very much today for your questions. We appreciate it. And please feel free to give us a call after the call, and we'll be glad to answer anything we didn't cover today. So thank you, and have a good week.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.