From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine Feb. 1, 2011Logistics News: Q4, All of 2010 Much Better forTruckload Carriers, but Data Show Divergent Performance Revenues Rise Nicely, but Profits Even More; What is Up with the Money Machine at Heartland Express? SCDigest Editorial StaffWith a modest economic recovery in 2010 and freight volumes showing definite but also improvement, US truckload carriers turned in strong financial improvement across the board in the fourth quarter and for the full year 2010, but the level ofimprovemen t varied widely across the sector. Fourth quarter and full year 2010 (unaudited) financial results started filtering in last week and are continuing this week, and overall the news is quite good for the carriers and their shareholder s, based on an SCDigest analysis of results from eight of the largest publicly trade TL carriers. As shown in the table below, Q4 was largely a good one for all the carriers, though as with the full year 2010 results this was in part the easy comparisons to the disastrous results that characterized all of 2009, a period that was legitimately called a "freight depression." SCDigest Says: In the end though, it all this meant good news for the carrier bottom lines, with profits up in Q4 in the 20-45% range for a number of them..
