A full, downloadable list of the 2019 CCJ Top 250 is available at CCJtop250.com. There you can also find listings broken down by revenues or number of trucks, tractors, trailers or drivers, and by type of haul and geographic region.
While carriers in the 2019 CCJ Top 250 ranking turned in significant revenue gains across most industry segments, those same companies added little capacity to the system. Year-over-year revenue growth of the carriers that disclosed revenue for the last two years was 9.9%. Excluding package giants UPS and FedEx, that same group turned in a 13.0% increase in revenues.
In a year that saw five of the nine industry segments post double-digit revenue increases, dedicated contract carriage and flatbed/specialized/heavy-haul carriers led the way at 19.8% each, followed by intermodal (14.9%), refrigerated (13.2%) and general freight (12.8%) carriers. Only the household goods segment failed to gain ground in fiscal year 2018.
Notable standouts include Ruan (CCJ Top 250, No. 32), whose 35.9% revenue increase buoyed the dedicated contract carriage group’s numbers; Penske Logistics (No. 20), which posted a 35.3% revenue increase after fully absorbing Epes Transport System; and Evans Network of Companies (No. 25), which posted revenue gains of 28.4% on the heels of its acquisitions of Greatwide Truckload Management and Packard Transport. Other high-achieving fleets include Landstar System (No. 8, 26.6%), Covenant Transportation Group (No. 35, 25.6%), RoadOne Intermodalogistics (No. 68, 33.3%) and Cypress Truck Lines (No. 175, 36.6%).
Trucking bankruptcies were few and far between in 2018, but two carriers are conspicuously absent from this year’s rankings after closing this year. Following two years of losses, New England Motor Freight (formerly No. 67) shut its doors in February, citing rising overhead costs and the driver shortage. NEMF soon was joined by Falcon Transport (formerly No. 146). The 719-tractor fleet lost a major customer and abruptly ceased operations in April, stranding drivers and trailer loads at truck stops across the country. Both carriers were heavily unionized.
Despite solid revenue performance up and down this year’s CCJ Top 250 ranking, the total number of trucks and tractors increased only 3.0% from 679,822 to 699,110. (UPS and FedEx combined account for nearly half of the increase with 9,158 additional power units.) The 238 carriers that appear in both this year’s and last year’s rankings only grew their tractor count at a 2.5% clip, from 480,384 to 492,381 units, and their overall power unit count grew just 3.3%.
CCJ Top 250 equipment counts reflect fleet size at the time of data collection conducted annually in late June and early July. Due to extensive order backlogs across all major OEMs and the lag time between order and placing power units into service during the last reporting cycle, the equipment counts in the 2019 CCJ Top 250 ranking may not yet reflect much of the unprecedented stretch of Class 8 activity from July through October 2018 that saw OEMs rake in orders for 189,605 units, as reported by FTR Transportation Intelligence.
