2026.09.24 | GP | Trucking | LTL & Brokerage 3Q26 Volumes

on 3Q26 Volume, Pricing, Share, and Margins

Associated:

SNDR

KNX

WERN

JBHT

XPO

ODFL

SAIA

AMZN

RXO

CHRW

FDXF

Viewpoint:

Customer

Moderator: Brandon Weber (BW)

| Sep 23, 2026 | 33 Min Read

Arthur Wayne Waggoner (AWW), Agency Owner and Independent Consultant - GlobalTranz

SUMMARY

The transcript covers a teleconference focused on the performance and strategic insights of a major player in the Less-Than- Truckload (LTL) and brokerage sector. The expert provides an overview of their experience in the industry, particularly with a large third-party logistics provider that has undergone significant mergers and acquisitions. The discussion primarily revolves around the company's performance in recent quarters, trends in shipment volumes, pricing strategies, and market dynamics affecting the LTL and full truckload (TL) sectors.

Key Insights

The expert notes a positive trend in shipment volumes and revenue growth in the LTL sector, with a steady increase in margins. This growth is attributed to a shift from full truckload to LTL services, driven by cost advantages. There is a fluctuation in margins within the full truckload sector, with more volatility compared to LTL. The expert highlights the impact of spot pricing and contract renegotiations on these margins. The expert expresses concerns about capacity tightening and service variability among carriers, particularly with specific facilities experiencing delays. The expert anticipates continued market share shifts due to rate increases and strategic pricing actions by various carriers.

Competitive Landscape

Company/Sector

Positive Aspects

Negative Aspects

LTL Sector

Growth in shipment volumes and revenue

Capacity tightening and service variability

Full Truckload Sector

Cost advantages driving shift to LTL

Volatile margins and fluctuating rates

XPO

Strong presence in LTL with must-arrive-by-date services

Service challenges in specific facilities

Central Transport

Large market share due to competitive rates

Recent rate increases may drive business away

R+L

Expanded volume offering

Service issues noted in recent months

C.H. Robinson

Strong in full truckload sector

Less competitive in LTL compared to smaller brokers

Quantitative Insights

Metric

Performance

LTL Revenue Growth

Up 10-12% year-over-year in Q3

LTL Margins

Steady at 16-17%

Full Truckload Margins

Fluctuating between 9% and 13%

Rate Increases

2-3% average increase throughout the year

Central Transport Rate

Increased by 10% in specific lanes

The discussion highlights the dynamic nature of the LTL and brokerage sectors, with strategic pricing and market shifts playing a significant role in shaping the competitive landscape.

BW: Hi, everyone. My name is Brandon Weber. I'm an industrial sales analyst here with Guidepoint. I want to welcome you to our Less-Than-Truckload and Brokerage Agent at Top 10 3PL on Q3 Volume, Pricing, Share, and Margins teleconference with Wayne Waggoner. If you have any questions for our advisor, feel free to email ask@guidepoint.com. We should be able to get to them and they'll be asked anonymously. Before we begin, Wayne, would you like to give us a little background on yourself? Then we can get started.

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, I'd be happy to. Currently, I'm 37 years and counting in the LTL environment. 19 of those were with Con-way pre-XPO. The other 17 were with GlobalTranz in some form or fashion, a large 3PL provider that's gone through some mergers and acquisitions and is now part of a $12 billion organization called ShipStation with our recent transaction, which I think was this past June. But I'm still involved with the GlobalTranz side of that, which I've always been, either starting as an agency owner back in 2009, morphing into their VP of agent field support role in 2018 after the sale of my agency to those guys and supported their agent network to grow their 700 agents at the time. Did that for 6 years until 2024 rolled around, took a step back, and did a little bit more of a consulting and advisory role on their agent advisory board, as well as running a couple of independent agency LLCs, if you will, with the GlobalTranz organization, which brings me up to my current status now.

BW: Perfect. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. Last time we spoke, believe it or not, was in April, and I think things have changed since then. It was still pretty soft at the moment. So maybe if you could level set for us how your shipments ended in Q2 and then what you're seeing in Q3.

Wayne Waggoner: Great question. If you look at our numbers from an agent perspective, obviously I have really deep visibility into that. We will do, as an agency network at GlobalTranz, over $1 billion with the LTL carriers in revenue this year and have been doing that for the last several years approaching that number. When I look at the year-to-date numbers, what was interesting in doing some comparisons from 2026 and 2025... just year-to-date, for example, I know you want to talk about Q2 and I'll get to that in a second, but we were up slightly, about 4.5%, which seems to be about the norm from what I'm hearing year-to-date on just our LTL business within the GlobalTranz agency network. But I think what was interesting is the first quarter of 2026 versus 2025, we were actually down about $6 million of LTL. In the second quarter, we started to, like everyone else, see some ramp up there. We were up about $9 million in the second quarter year-over-year, and then that continued into what we're seeing currently into the third

quarter, which we were up about another $14 million year-over-year. The second quarter is really, obviously when it started to ramp up a bit for us after what I thought was just more of a flat first quarter, was actually down a little bit for us, a couple of 3%. But then we rebounded back in the Q2 and gained some momentum into Q3, like I mentioned, and then so far in September, those numbers have held steady. I'm still expecting that to continue to grow. So, just a little bit of a snapshot year-over-year and quarter versus quarter for us.

BW: Super helpful. So Q3, July, August, September, fairly similar year-over-year type trends.

Wayne Waggoner: We're up actually looking at those 3 months in particular, we're up another 10% to 12% depending on the month. So yes, positive trends in each of those.

BW: Mm-hmm.

Wayne Waggoner: Particular months, you know, June, July, and August were for us. If I look at June's numbers, we were up about 5.5 million; August, we were up another 4 versus last year, and then 5 again in August. So just kind of holding steady at about that 10% year-over-year for the Q3 quarter so far.

BW: Mm-hmm. And then these numbers are, this is top line, it's like shipper count. I was wondering if anything, what's shifting underneath, if anything?

Wayne Waggoner: Now, the margins on that business for us run about 16.5% for LTL, and they've been steady throughout the year. With that, anywhere from 16% to 17% is what they've been running. That's been steady. Shipper count kind of followed this revenue trend a little bit. Both shipper count and number of shippers were down, obviously, in the first quarter, contributing to that decrease, and those have slowly started to build, but they haven't been probably maybe as necessarily as pronounced if I had to look at the percentage increases just because there's been some advantages due to fuel being at an all-time high and things like that, which is factored into these numbers. So the shipper count and the bill count actually are up in Q2 and Q3. But if I had to take a ballpark guess at that, those would probably be in a 2% range-ish overall.

BW: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, I mean, if you had to put a finger on the pickup, anything you're seeing from a type of business like the end market or even a TL to LTL shift?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, so I think there's some continuation of the truckload to the LTL shift that's been identified as a factor, not just with us a little bit, but with some of the direct carriers that we do business with. And I've noticed on the full truckload side for us, there's a bigger swing in the margins on those, which obviously, you know, we're trying to adjust to increased full truckload costs, right, for the customer. So some of that business is kind of shifted over. Like, for example, if I have a customer that has a segment of business that can run in the volume range that could run on either a box truck, which would be considered full truckload or full 53, I'll get a much better rate using an LTL volume with an Estes, for example. And so usually what I will do is ship that business over to the LTL carrier and save the customer 1,000 or so on average, and then I'm able to increase my margin on my LTL. So we're still seeing a shift in that type of business. And then I think just in general, things are better, obviously. The manufacturer's industrial index, I think, has been up again slightly for, what, 8 months, 8 or 9 months consecutively, so that continues to improve. And then we've seen a little bit of an uptick from the carrier side on some of the retail business that they really were deathly afraid to handle before just because of the nuances of that delivery, but they're trying to figure out ways to get compensated for that, come up with different types of services like, you know, XPO is now heavily into the must-arrive- by-date service that they price appropriately to drive some more retail business for them. And we use them quite a bit for that. FedEx is doing some of that; I think we'll see some of the other carriers start to follow suit. So some of that retail business too has attributed to that.

BW: Yeah, okay. No, that's... Interesting. That's generally pretty solid. You do some TL business as well, right?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, about 50% of our business on the GlobalTranz side is full truckload.

BW: And how do margins look there? You mentioned steady margins in LTL, but what about in TL?

Wayne Waggoner: Much more fluctuation. You know, what I've noticed is on any given month we could be, and it's a truckload margin, so typically lower anyway than LTL, but they'll be anywhere from 1 month to 12% to 13% margins. And then in one particular month, we dropped as low with our numbers to 9%, right? And then it would bounce back to 13%. So there's a lot more fluctuation there. And we have a combination with our truckload offering and, you know, obviously spot pricing and contract pricing. So I think it's really that spot pricing, right? Obviously that, barring any renegotiations on the contract side, then we're seeing these, you know, potentially these ebbs and swings on the full truckload side, which are creating these margin ebbs and flows for us. But that's much more volatile on the truckload side from a margin standpoint.

BW: Yeah, understood. Okay, since I'm going a little deeper on that point, Q2 versus Q3 margins in truckload, how have those looked?

Wayne Waggoner: Those, if I remember correctly, were running in the 12% to 13% range on average. There was one particular two-week period in the month where it dropped down to like we were showing a 9% margin, but then it bounced back up to 12% or 13%. So they've been in that 12% to 13% range for both of those quarters is what I'm seeing.

BW: Yeah, okay. Got it. And anything else you'd call out? Let's say you had another bump up in truckload rates from here. Interested in your thoughts on that, what do you think the impact would be on this TL to LTL shift?

Wayne Waggoner: There's going to be some continued attrition over... on the LTL side. I think, like I said before, the smart agents for us, anyway, are going to be looking to provide different options for a segment of business that they just said they don't want to spend the money on, you know. And even though we're running a full 53, it's going to be about $1,000 on average more if I can put something on a 24-foot box truck, right? So, but both of those options are going to still be quite a bit more expensive than an LTL volume. So it's going to continue to have an impact if truckload rates continue, I think, to rise. I think it'll... I'm going to say it's going to be fairly minimal, but we're going to still be hearing about that.

BW: Okay. Got it. On the carrier side, were you experiencing service issues in that Q2 as things started picking up?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, it's starting to tighten up on capacity, you know, a little bit. I think there's still, I mean, it's not what it was, obviously, and I think some of the other bigger players in the 3PL market. I noticed that like C.H. Robinson, for example, they had made the comment that they're seeing some service availability variations in their LTL carrier group right now. And we're seeing the same thing. I don't know if it was you guys or someone else I was talking to on one of these calls, but XPO, for example, in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, which is where I'm located, historically, they have about 4 facilities here. There's really, other than their huge Dallas facility, their outlying suburban type facilities are usually their boutique facilities and operate very well, easy pickups, easy deliveries. We were starting to see some crunch impact them in one of their locations, which I've never seen before. So I was a little bit worried this was a couple of months ago. I think that's smoothed out a little bit. But overall, yes, I mean, we have seen a little bit more tightening up, I think, on capacity and there has been some impact. But again, it really does depend on the carrier. T-Force has been struggling with this for some time now, regardless of capacity. We're Old Dominion. If you want to pay the rate, there's no issues there. But XPO, I think, has deteriorated a little bit. That would be the only other one just because they've had an influx of business that I've noticed a little bit more challenging on

the service side but overall, my concern is that this thing continues to build up maybe in Q4 and going into the next 12 months what that service variability is going to look like if they're starting to feel it now I can imagine what it's going to be like in 6 months and things if things take a dramatic leap into double-digit growth.

BW: Okay, so the XPO comment, you said that's sort of beginning of Q3, but you say it's gotten better, but you'd still characterize it as somewhat challenged? I'm just trying to understand exactly.

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, it's still challenging. It had gotten to the point where I actually had to tell a customer, do not use that facility anymore because they were actually 2 days behind on pickups. And I've never seen that before out of that particular location. So I'm assuming they have the ability in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, obviously, to change service, zip codes and things like that to shift freight around. But that data told me they were probably tight in the rest of their surrounding DFW facilities as well because they hadn't done it. Now, they may have done it since, but at that time, we haven't moved a lot to that particular location. But that was a red flag to me because I'd never seen that before from them, especially out of that location.

BW: Mm-hmm.

Wayne Waggoner: And typically now what will happen, Brandon, is, and we didn't used to see a lot of this in the past, but these carriers will implement embargoes into these larger metropolitan areas and they won't pick up or deliver anything until they get current in whatever area that they don't have the capacity for anymore, right? So instead of getting 2, 3 days behind, then they're removing those zip codes and they're embargoing those zip codes until they can get caught up. So we see that usually every single week that gets reported, we'll see a carrier or 2 on the embargo list, and then they'll come off of it within a couple of weeks usually, or whenever they can get current in those big, larger locations.

BW: Got it. And would you, you said that you're trying to avoid that facility for XPO, but more broadly, do you feel like there's share shifts going on?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, I think looking at some of the public companies that have put numbers out there, when you're looking at XPO, you've seen some growth. Not quite as pronounced as it has been, and I think even Saia in this last, in August, really showed quite a bit of growth as well as ABF did. So I'm not quite sure where ABF is getting their time growth, but that tells me that there's been some market share, but along those lines, we're starting to see more rate increases now with carriers. So, and I've done, we've get to that, but I've jotted down some that have taken increases that were typically at the bottom of the food chain for us. Like Central Transport, which has a pretty large market share actually just due to rates, not great service, but they recently took an increase of about 10% on the blanket pricing. So that's going to drive some of that business in a different direction if they're doing that in a uniform way with all the 3PLs. So there's definitely...

BW: For you, how much is blankets versus customer-specific pricing?

Wayne Waggoner: We're probably, for my business, it's like 90/10 blanket. For our agent model, I would say it's heavily weighted towards the blankets because our blanket pricing, because of our buying power of over $1 billion, the blankets are going to be extremely aggressive. And in a lot of cases, they're going to be more aggressive than the class-specific pricing or contract pricing we're able to get. But probably if I had to, it's probably 75/25 on the blankets for us, to be honest with you.

BW: Mm hmm.

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah,

BW: Yeah, Wayne Waggoner: that's super good.

BW: I mean, we've definitely seen earlier GRIs this year. And so when Central increased by 10%, for example, did that just put them closer to where others were? How would you compare rates across carriers?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, so... I think there's going to be... it's not happened in long since they've done this, but I want to say it was maybe the beginning of the month, but it's shifted them. They're no longer in a lot of these lanes, the low- cost provider. Like we're seeing— I've noticed now we're seeing Central Transport. T-Force, which has typically been the low-cost provider, 1 of them for us, and XPO, like maybe 3, depending on the lane. I had a customer today asking for advice on where to move some freight, and he had pulled up a rate with us, and his cheapest 3 options were Central Transport... was up in the Northeast. But it was Central Transport, T-Force, and XPO in that order. I told them to move with XPO because they're just better on the pickup side, you know, in the Northeast, in my opinion. But it puts Central Transport either not the cheapest price carrier or definitely closer, you know, between numbers 1, 2, and

1. Which for a lot of customers, they're still looking for that lowest cost option. Especially right now, you know.

BW: How much are rates up in Q1, Q2, Q3?

Wayne Waggoner: How much were rates up?

BW: Yeah, like on the average rate.

Wayne Waggoner: Probably in the 2% to 3% range, I would say. Overall, as it kind of moved throughout the year, they had a gradual but slight increase throughout the year. It hasn't been that significant, but there has been some increase, you know, I think in that range.

BW: Yeah, okay, so that's... but when you're talking about a 10% increase from Central Transport, what's the offset to that on rates? Why wouldn't we expect to see mid plus single digit increases in rates in Q3 plus since everyone's had to put a GRI in?

Wayne Waggoner: Well, again, some of these increases are... they're getting to be a little bit more... it's a little bit more complicated question because some of these increases are lane driven, right? It's 10% in a certain lane segment, 4%, no impact in another lane segment. So that 10%, you know, may be the number for a particular lane segment. Then you have other carriers that are actually, in the past, throughout the year, have been adjusting down, too. We've had carriers several months ago like R+L take a pretty significant rate reduction with us. So I'm sure some of that business probably moved over there as well as Southeastern did. While some of these carriers are taking, the bottom price carriers maybe taking some increases, we've seen some shifting either up or down, even XPO, Saia, Southeastern and R+L, for example. And then usually when T-Force takes an increase as they just did at the end of July, it's a 1% increase. So I kind of throw that 2% to 3% or 4% number out there and that kind of is an average just because it's such a moving target with all the different increases and decreases these guys are taking depending on the different lane segments. It's probably the best way I can try to explain that.

BW: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So, you know, we obviously see the GRI, Saia had done one earlier, 7%, and you just mentioned Central. We just followed Old Dominion's 4.9% about a month earlier than last year. But it sounds like... These aren't actually general rate increases necessarily, but you're taking so much blanket pricing, so how are you negotiating these specific lanes at any given moment?

Wayne Waggoner: It's just, yeah, I mean, our pricing group will just negotiate, I guess, and analyze the numbers for these lane segments with the carrier and determine where we can and can't take a rate. It's obviously just a

negotiation with each individual carrier. One thing I didn't mention, too, is that Roadrunner, who's trying to increase their market share, has come in with a 10% decrease on July the 9th. So, to my earlier point, some of these carriers with us taking decreases, Old Dominion, they're taking a 4.9%. They may have to back off of some of that, I guess, depending on specific customers. But, you know, while we have some increases, like I said, we also have some of these carriers trying to increase market share with us that are taking decreases like we're going to. So, BW: And would you say that's been increasing through the year, that kind of behavior?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, well, I think it's pretty general for what we've been seeing throughout the year, to be honest with you. When we see more of it now, and I think in the last couple of months, because there was a timeframe in there where we saw very little activity at all on our blanket adjustments, we wouldn't see anything currently. And now I've just noticed that, within the last couple of months, I'm looking at Southeastern, Forward Air, Roadrunner, Estes, XPO, R+L, AAA, of course, I threw in Old Dominion in October, but, and then Central Transport. So that's been within, that's really since end of July, August. And if you go back looking several months prior to that, there might have been a couple months in there, 2 or 3 months where we didn't see anything from anybody, hardly. So, it hasn't been like normal or general, I guess, to use your term, but there's definitely more activity now and I think they're all trying to figure out strategically where they need to be, based on their capacity. Yes. So, I mean, it's— these are just ever changing. R+L, they just talking about some full truck to full truckload business moving over. R+L just expanded their volume offering with us up to 16 feet of a trailer for LTL states like this last week. So they're obviously looking to fill some need on their volume side. I think their past rules were they might have given us maybe 10 feet of a trailer that could move LTL before it got up into volume pricing. But now they would get up to 16 feet. So yeah, they're probably looking to drive a little bit more business into those larger volume type shipments by doing that.

BW: I mean, to all this different pricing actions, are they able to gain a lot of share here or not necessarily?

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, it remains to be seen like with R+L. I don't think this change with R+L is going to drive a whole lot because... I guess it's going to depend on their rate structure, obviously. So my personal opinion is it won't drive a lot of market share. But when AAA Cooper, you know, across the board, give or take the lane segment, just increased, I think, 8% with us on 9-3, that'll drive some business away from AAA Cooper depending on the lane. And Southeastern, which is a regional carrier... and we see a lot of this because we have rates with every single LTL carrier known to man... if they cover 2 states in the Midwest, we've got them. And they're taking increases and decreases too. A lot of times they're taking decreases while some of these other carriers are increasing rates, so these regional niche carriers can drive some more market share. So every time Southeastern, for example, which just took an 8% increase in the state of Texas and Oklahoma with us, that's probably going to drive some of that business away from them to one of these other regional carriers, probably.

BW: But I think that this still sounds like it's a pretty positive pricing environment and that's continuing as we speak. Yeah, the R+L one we had heard a lot of service issues earlier, but you didn't call them out. I don't know if this rate activity is them trying to address that with their customers who maybe got burned or not.

Wayne Waggoner: It's interesting that you said that on the service side because I've never thought of R+L having service issues at all, but we have really... well, our sister company had grandfathered really aggressive blanket rates, so I think we do a decent amount of business with them. They're not typically that retail friendly, but I have noticed that we, on the business that I've been running, we have been having pickup problems on occasion. I always kind of put them in the Old Dominion group. Hey, if you want to use R+L, they've got lift gates on every trailer. You may pay a little more, but you're not going to miss your pickup. And they've done some quirky things like missed pickups lately that I've noticed, hazmat shipments, driver shows up, says he's not picking the freight up, there's nothing wrong with the way the shipment's labeled, that kind of stuff, just weird, which I never thought... I thought R+L was better than that. So it's interesting that you said that because I've never noticed them before like dropping the ball at all and I've seen that some now on the pickup side.

BW: Do you see any difference in the types of loads like XPO is willing to take versus Saia that's different from what they were doing before?

Wayne Waggoner: No, no, I haven't seen any turning down of any particular type of freight. You know, I think, I don't know if the fact that the NMFC changes have had something to do with that, probably. And I think there's going to be more. There was, which you're probably familiar with, but they're coming out now with some more changes on the NMFC rules, unlike mixed commodity shipments where they used to, on a mixed commodity pallet, they would pick out the product with the highest class in the skid, and then the whole shipment would move at that highest class, which was extremely hard for the carriers to do and figure out so I think they're going to move that to all density based, it's going to be easier. But the NMFC changes are probably relaxed out a bit with the carriers where they're more apt now to want to pick up, you know, a little bit more of that long, hard to handle, take up more space in the trailer type of freight than they really were before because of this freight class system. So I haven't really seen that in terms of a type of a problem.

BW: Are you saying that NMFC changes are having a net negative, like blended rate for them, like an impact on blended rate or net positive? I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, I think it's a net positive for them on the density side. I think that they're coming out on the positive end of that, to be honest with you. So they're not really arguing much about, "Hey, we don't want to pick up your type of freight, Mr. Customer." Just not seeing that. So I think they are coming out on the positive side of it.

BW: Yeah, okay, and those are... Recent changes you've seen? Because that incrementals all this pricing we've been talking about in the same Q3.

Wayne Waggoner: No, it's been incremental since the NMFC changes back... when was that, back July of last year? Yeah. So it started out really slow and then it started to gain more momentum because when you look back at what they did, they left a lot of commodities alone. There was a segment that they just changed the class on, did away with the NMFC number, and there was a certain segment of commodities that they moved to density-based, and there was a certain segment of commodities that they earmarked basically letting us know that, hey, not right now, but it's coming. And they're continuing; that's just evolving. They're continuing to change those NMFC numbers to density- based. So what used to be moving at a certain NMFC number a month ago may be obsolete now; it's already moved to density-based. So it's been slowly evolving, but it's definitely gaining more traction, which we knew it would.

BW: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I was asking the question about different carriers taking shipments or not. I mean, XPO, you're still seeing a reduction in weight per shipment. Saia is up a lot, suggesting maybe that it's willing to take more truckload-y type shipments, and XPO is not favoring it as much, but it sounds like you haven't noticed that.

Wayne Waggoner: I haven't noticed it. I know I've noticed just looking at their numbers, right? But when I work outside of business, I haven't noticed that.

BW: Anything new from FedEx?

Wayne Waggoner: Well, you probably know about the shakeup, right, at the C-level. You know about that. So, I mean, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about that, but there's obviously a change there. Nothing really new. I know they're focusing more on the SMB market with their sales reps right now, which is a market they typically didn't go after in the past.

BW: Yep.

Wayne Waggoner: I do know a little bit about the Dallas operation because I'm here and I have people that I've

worked with for years at Con-way that have worked over there. And they're challenged. It's more from a dock handler, frontline supervision scenario. In some of these larger 24-5 operations where it's hard to keep frontline supervision, dock handlers. They recently were on a kind of a binge to add 25 dock handlers in Dallas, which is a lot. Just a lot of continuous turnover, really. You do get that in these large facilities, but I think it's been a little bit abnormal for whatever reason with those guys, and I'm not quite sure why that is. I did hear that they were delivering 300 containers to Walmart recently, which was obviously a large amount. And then someone had made the comment that, with Amazon kind of looming out there, they wouldn't be surprised if there was some type of relationship, maybe with Walmart in the future. I don't know how that would look, if it would be an acquisition, merger, but... And somebody just kind of threw that my way and says, it's not even discussed, but they're doing a lot more business, I think, with Walmart, it seems like.

BW: Anything new from Amazon you've seen as a LTL competitor or as a broker?

Wayne Waggoner: Am I seeing anything from Amazon? Yeah. No, it's been quiet. I haven't heard anything or seen anything at all on them lately. No, they're not competing with us, to my knowledge. I haven't had one customer or heard of any that has been in jeopardy with Amazon to move their business from us to them.

BW: On the broker side, RXO has been talking up their Q3 just continued finding spot opportunities. This is really more truckload. C.H. Robinson in Q2 was fairly soft in terms of volume on the TL side, but LTL looked really good. Anything you'd call out between those two brokers?

Wayne Waggoner: Who's C.H. Robinson and who was the other one?

All right, so no, not really. I think for us, the big... we've always viewed C.H. Robinson more as a competitive monster on the full truckload side than the LTL side, and we struggle to compete against that over the years, over that model. They've just been more automated on full truckload and it's a different sell for them, where... it's more of a moving number target; they're going to throw out a rate immediately and then their issue becomes whether or not they can source and find a truck. So our model has been more, we're going to price a little on the higher side and we will always have a truck usually, but... it eliminates us from the competitiveness on some of the full truckload business, I think. But we've been able to grow it, but it's just been higher margins. But on the LTL side, I've never been, C.H. Robinson has never been a big fear of mine or our company. It's been more of a smaller... priority ones. People like that that we've had to deal with at C.H. Robinson, or even like RXO. I don't know much about their model, to be honest with you, especially on LTL. But that's interesting that they've grown that piece of it though.

BW: Yeah. Okay. No. I'm trying to think through what we should expect to see from C.H. Robinson in particular in Q3. It's a large Wayne Waggoner: You BW: one.

Wayne Waggoner: One thing with us—and I don't know how much you guys know about us—but we merged or we were acquired by Thoma Bravo, which owns Auctane, which owns ShipStation, which is a huge. You've seen ShipStation on TV. They're a huge parcel reseller. And so we went from a $6 billion, $5 billion company to $12 billion. And the LTL rates are being now implemented into the ShipStation global. So all those accounts now, in addition to being able to resell parcel, we'll be able to have our LTL rates that we've had at the homogenized rates that we've had with GlobalTranz, Unishippers, or similar ones. So when you're looking at like CH Robinson's LTL spend and our LTL spend, I don't know what the impact on that's going to be because we just did it, but I guess if you can imagine, those ShipStation global customers that have been shipping UPS, parcel, and doing something totally different on another system, TMS with their LTL, now have the ability to combine it into 1 TMS and get our rate structure that they may or may not have been able to get by going the other avenue. So there could be some significant numbers on the LTL

business if that works.

BW: Okay. All these lawsuits, Montgomery, et cetera, it's been more truckload side and the carrier calling going on at brokers. How are you all thinking about that and liability?

Wayne Waggoner: I think like everyone else, we're cutting down on the quality, or trying to improve the quality on the full truckload side. I've noticed on my particular business, we've done a good job vetting these companies, but we haven't had a lot of issues with fraud. We've had more issues with accidents because everyone's forced, because of the driver pool, to get the less experienced drivers. We've had... thank God we haven't had any fatalities... but we've had several where there's been freight damage and things like that that have been on a little bit of an uptick for us, but nothing from a legal standpoint. And I'm not sure they're always advertising something we're doing on the full truckload side. Percent of my business is mostly LTL, so I have a tendency to not focus quite as much on the full truckload and just let our in-house team source it and take care of the legalities of that. But it's about once a month, or once every other month, they will have an agent call and they'll go over some of the tools that we're now implementing on the fraud side to try to prevent fraud and things like that, but it's more geared around that. Yeah.

BW: There's a theory that this is good for large brokers versus small. You talk to small brokers, and I don't mean small, but sort of mid-ish size, and they say, "No, we're doing a good job vetting, there's a lot of tools, we're specialized." I'm wondering how you think this shakes out ultimately.

Wayne Waggoner: Yeah, I mean, we've seen some leave the market already, but we have typically the best results on our full truckload business, you know, by using smaller brokerages, to be honest with you, and smaller asset-based companies than we do with the bigger ones. So, yeah, I don't... I mean, there'll be people exit, which is going to happen anyway, but I don't think... and I think this case is being appealed too... I don't think it'll be a huge shift on the truckload side.

BW: Well, I mean, do you think that there's enough tightening still on the carrier side happening at the broker level that would impact the market?

Wayne Waggoner: I'm sorry, enough what?

BW: I was thinking about with brokers being more selective on carriers, are they firing enough carriers that that's having the impact of tightening the TL market still?

Wayne Waggoner: Oh, no, I don't think so. I mean, speaking in terms of us, I don't see the business that we're moving being handled, you know, that way. I think we're still looking in, let's face it, right, like depending on the constraints of a particular load, how bad you want the load and who you're competing against. You know, you may have to resort to an option that might be in your mind, you know, more of a risk than another option, obviously. But if it comes down to securing that load, that's going to be always a huge factor. So I don't think... I think that's going to continue, I guess is what I'm saying. So I don't think people will shy away from that to create any huge capacity issues, to be honest with you.

BW: Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, it's all pretty interesting. Are you seeing anyone, like brokers, getting added to lawsuits?

Wayne Waggoner: No, I haven't. I've seen some people, more people like things exiting the market, I've noticed. You know, just people I haven't heard of before, which I haven't noticed before, but nobody involved in any type of major lawsuits like this, which I don't know what the latest is on this one, but I'm sure it's going to be hanging out there for a long time. So it probably sounds like a long time.

BW: All right. Well, let's leave it there. I really appreciate the catch up. And yeah, we'll do it again down the road.

Wayne Waggoner: Okay, I appreciate the time.

BW: No, I do, and best of luck with it all.

Wayne Waggoner: Thank you, talk to you soon, Brandon.

BW: Hey, take care. Bye-bye.

Wayne Waggoner: Thank you, take care. Bye.

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