Celadon Profit Drops 40 Percent
(photo courtesy of Celadon)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based Celadon Group Inc. (NYSE: CGI) is reporting fiscal third quarter net income of $5.2 million, down from $8.6 million during the same period last year. Chief Executive Officer Paul Will says the 40 percent drop can be attributed in part to weaker freight volumes and pricing pressure.
"We have continued to focus on our four key business initiatives which include moving the business model to more dedicated and committed customer freight, increasing our asset light model which broadens our value-added customer service offering at good margins, creating more lane density in our core operating lanes, and increasing our brokerage portion of our business in lanes that do not create lane density," says Will. "We have seen improvement in several of our key operating statistics sequentially as a result of this increased focus. We believe these efforts will position us well to continue to focus on improving our key operating metrics in future quarters and will be beneficial long term as capacity is challenged by a very competitive driver recruiting market."
Will says the company will continue work on driver recruitment and retention. He says a shrinking supply of qualified drivers and economic and safety regulatory issues could cause truckload capacity issues for shippers in the future.
Will adds Celadon is continuing to work on cost reduction initiatives in an effort to improve operating results.
The earnings report comes less than a month after the death of Celadon Founder Steve Russell. Russell started the company in 1985 and served as chairman and CEO until 2012.