William B. Cassidy | Apr 02, 2010 3:44PM EDT
The select group of trucking companies with more than a billion dollars in annual revenue shrank last year, as four companies fell below the revenue threshold.
That left 13 motor carriers in trucking's billion-dollar club, according to a list of the top 50 trucking companies ranked by revenue prepared by SJ Consulting Group.
Those 13 companies had combined revenue of $58.3 billion in 2009, 74.2 percent of the total revenue for the top 50 carriers. Altogether, that was a 16 percent drop from the $69.4 billion in revenue the same group of carriers had the previous year.
They were led by UPS and FedEx, which far outdistanced their competitors with trucking income of $21.8 billion and $11 billion, respectively, according to SJ Consulting.
The Pittsburgh-based consultant only counted revenue from trucking operations, leaving out supply chain, logistics and other sources of revenue.
At UPS, SJ Consulting included UPS Freight and ground-based package revenue. At FedEx, it included FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight and its subsidiary units.
In addition to FedEx and UPS, the billion dollar club included five less-than-truckload carriers and six truckload carriers. The LTL carriers were YRC Worldwide, Con-way, ABF Freight System, Estes Express Lines and Old Dominion Freight Line.
The truckload carriers were J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Schneider National, Swift Transportation, Landstar System, Werner Enterprises and U.S. Xpress Enterprises.
Crete Carrier, Greatwide Logistics, C.R. England and Saia, which were all billion-dollar companies in 2008, saw sales drop below that threshold last year.
A full report on the top 50 trucking companies will be published in the April 12 issue of The Journal of Commerce and will be available online to members of The Journal of Commerce.
Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com.
