These companies, known as asset-lite truckers, lease vehicles for businesses that need to ship goods, so they have more cost flexibility than companies that own and operate most of their trucks. Shares of companies like Roadrunner Transportation Systems Inc. and C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. have grown by 6.9 percent since July 30th of last year. This is a significant amount compared to the 1.5 percent decline in operations reported by conventional operators, including Celadon Group Inc. and Werner Enterprises Inc.
“We are way past the early cycle rally,” and now see “sustainable elements to the recovery,” said Benjamin Hartford, transportation analyst at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co. According to him, as the economic recovery starts to mature, customers will increasingly start to prefer the “greater resiliency” in companies with flexible costs.
According to the most recent data from the US Department of Transportation, demand for trucking services accounted for a massive 71 percent of all US goods shipped in 2007. The Baird report shows that the industry has grown for 26 months straight, since the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index hit a recession low in December 2008.
The economy will likely rise at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in 2011, backed by exports and business spending on equipment and software that will generate most of the growth, said Joseph Carson, director of economic research at Alliance Bernstein LP in New York.
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