Earnings Watch: YRC Worldwide 1st Quarter Loss Doubles

Financial losses for YRC Worldwide Inc., parent to both national and regional less-than-truckload carriers, more than doubled in the first quarter of the year despite a small upturn in revenue.

YRC reported a net loss of $25.3 million in the most recent quarter, or 78 cents per share, worse than analysts expectations. This compares to a net loss a year ago of $12 million, or 37 cents per share. Revenue in the most recent quarter was $1.17 billion versus $1.12 billion a year earlier.

According to CEO James Welch, while the company's regional carriers' performance was in line with results from a year ago, including an increase in tonnage per day, its national LTL fleet ran into problems.

“YRC Freight's results in the first quarter were unfavorably impacted by a year-over-year decrease in revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel surcharge, that more than offset increases in tonnage per day and weight per shipment,” he said. “We expect the improvement in year-over-year tonnage per day to help us execute our strategy of pricing for profitability and moving shipments through YRC Freight, Holland, Reddaway and New Penn's networks that have favorable freight characteristics.”

Despite the challenges, Welch said YRC believes the pricing environment remains stable in the less-than-truckload sector and the company's goal for 2017 is to beat its 2016 EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) numbers.

To help meet this goal, YRC implemented a plan during the first quarter of 2017 to eliminate approximately $25 million of costs over the next year. The savings include downsizing the management and other non-union workforce by approximately 180 positions.

“Headcount reduction is the most significant source of savings while other changes included increasing collaboration across our companies and reducing the utilization of external professional services,” said Welch.

During the first quarter, YRC Freight recording an operating loss of $10.5 million ...Read the rest of this story

Delta apologizes for ‘booting’ passenger off flight

A video was posted online by Brian Schear on Wednesday, claiming that Delta "booted" him off a flight, along with his wife and two infants, due to overbooking. "We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta," the company said in a statement on Thursday. This comes nearly a month after United Continental Holdings Inc (UAL.N) sparked outrage for dragging a passenger by his hands, out of an overbooked flight.

Inside U.S. Xpress’ Award-Winning Leadership Development Programs

U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Deborah Lockridge

We may hear a lot about the driver shortage and even the technician shortage, but increasingly trucking is facing a shortage of talented leadership as well. U.S. Xpress has been taking steps to combat that, and recently was recognized with a national human resources award for its innovative efforts to recruit and develop talent.

“As we look at a lot of our peers, they have near retirement level management teams and are looking for talent to backfill that,” said CEO Eric Fuller, “I think they're not finding, all the way to up the executive level, the type of talent they need to fill those positions,” he told HDT in an interview at the truckload fleet's Chattanooga, Tennessee, headquarters.

Earlier this year, Fuller was named CEO and Lisa Quinn Pate was named president and chief administrative officer, the culmination of a five-year transition process to new leadership for the company. The two put into place their own management team that reflects the way they want to pivot the company, “to become what we call a more professionally managed orientation, focused on metrics, data, and processes,” Fuller said.

And sometimes, Quinn Pate explained, there were people who had been with the company for a long time but weren't the right fit. “That was a very painful process to go through,” she said. “We realized we may need to go outside the company, but our philosophy was that we want the best people for the job in that seat — and they may be internal or they may be external.”

That experience helped lead to the launch of a two-year leadership development program called Xpress Elite, designed to identify high-potential employees inside and outside of the company and develop them into future leaders for U.S. Xpress.

HR.com ranked ...Read the rest of this story

Cummins Guidanz App Helps Improve Uptime

Cummins has released the Guidanz mobile app, allowing users to read prioritized engine fault codes and other key engine information from a vehicle.

The Guidanz app offers critical information about Cummins 2007 and later on-highway engines and Tier 3 and later off-highway engines. The information can be emailed to an operations manager, service providers or a Cummins Care representative directly from the app to initiate the service process.

The Immediate Assessment feature of the Guidanz app is available to certified service providers to help improve shop scheduling. As providers begin to adopt Immediate Assessment in the coming months, they will not only be able to read the fault code, but assess the severity of the fault, how quickly it can be repaired, what repair parts are likely needed, and start a work order before a customer enters the service bay.

To operate, the Guidanz app must be paired with an Inline mini Bluetooth adapter or Inline 7 and requires an iOS or Android device. Though the Guidanz mobile app requires a smartphone or tablet to operate, it will still function when the device is offline. Customers are provided a list of fault codes regardless of connectivity, so even when operating in remote locations customers are still able to access with enough information to call operations managers, service providers or Cummins Care and initiate the service process.

“The Guidanz mobile app with the Immediate Assessment feature is giving customers back valuable hours that used to be spent troubleshooting by arming customers and service providers with information backed by immeasurable amounts of data and analysis done by Cummins experts,” said Ryan Kikendall, executive director, service event solutions at Cummins.

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Crude oil is sinking like a stone: NYSE trader

Alexis Christoforous s joined by Alan Valdes, director of floor operations at Silverbear, at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the plummeting price of oil.

Kenworth Offers OnGuardActive on T680, T880

A Kenworth T680 demonstrating the Meritor Wabco OnGuardActive safety system. Photo: Kenworth

The Meritor Wabco OnGuardActive radar-based safety system is now available as an option on Kenworth T680 and T880 models.

The safety system features forward collision warning, collision mitigation, and adaptive cruise control. The system measures the truck's position in relation to other vehicles and objects, detects moving, stopped or stationary vehicles ahead, and uses audible, visual and short brake pulse warnings to alert the driver of causing a possible rear-end collision.

OnGuardActive is also capable of applying the brakes when appropriate to help avoid or mitigate a rear-end collision.

“Meritor Wabco's OnGuardActive safety system is an important, new option for our on–highway and vocational flagships, the T680 and T880, Kenworth's two most technologically advanced vehicles,” said Kurt Swihart, Kenworth marketing director. “Kenworth continues to introduce systems that can help drivers maintain a safe distance, mitigate collisions and operate safely in rapidly changing and challenging road conditions.”

Related: Wabco Partnerships Aimed at Advancing Autonomous Vehicle Tech

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