ODFL Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc.

$ODFL Sixteen trucking and transportation companies entered bankruptcy between late August and September 21. Seven of them ran six trucks or fewer. Three were a single truck and a single driver. The mechanism is timing, not just price: fuel is paid for at the pump within days, while freight invoices take 60 to 90 days to collect. A small carrier without a credit line finances that gap personally.

$ODFL Susquehanna cut its price target to 202 from 232 on Friday, keeping a Neutral (MarketBeat). The tension in the note is in the second-quarter numbers. Revenue was 1.55 billion, up 10.4% year over year, and EPS hit a record 1.68. But LTL tons per day fell 4.1% and shipments per day fell 5.7%. So all of the growth is price. LTL revenue per hundredweight rose 15.2% to 37.84. Yield is doing the whole job while volume still shrinks. That is the freight cycle's quiet question: how long pricing can carry a carrier when tonnage keeps declining. J.B. Hunt warned in September that third-quarter earnings would drop 5 to 10% sequentially on fuel and driver costs. The street is converging around the low 200s: BofA cut to 205 last month, Bernstein initiated at 200. Closed Friday at 180.48, still 28% below the 52-week high.