ODFL
#It's a good question and the feedback we get, and from the data that we have, we think it's a general trend across all the customers.
But another point that I'm not sure we as a company or industry even, have talked much about, is this whole energy industry.
That is probably affecting our economy all across the board, with what's going on with the price of oil.
You would think that the price of oil being down would stimulate more consumer demand than it has.
And there are some economists who believe that the consumer is going to pull us out of this slump next year.
And perhaps that will be the case.
But the industrial economy that supports the energy industry has a lot of tentacles, and we haul ---+ what's our percentage of industrial.
About 40%.
About 40% of our freight is industrial, and embedded in that piece are industrial customers that are tied with the energy industry.
So that's probably where we're seeing some of the business softness.
Correct
The year-over-year trends in weight per day were, it was plus 4.4% in October, plus 3.1% in November, and plus 1.1% in December.
And those are all year over year.
No.
That's just what we're thinking about, that we think we can achieve this year, and obviously that can go up or down depending on all the variables that go into it.
But I think we're just trying to be a little bit more targeted, with what we think, and we've achieved rates greater than 20% in the past.
And we feel good about what our opportunities are for this coming year.
So historically, when LTL weight per shipment goes down, it has been tied to an economic ---+ the economy slowing down.
When the economy picks back up, the weight per shipment, the orders that people order, get larger.
So I do believe part of the weight per shipment decline is due to the soft patch we're in, in the economy.
So therefore, if we get some economic improvement, you would think the weight per shipment would come back up and those headwinds that we, that I have mentioned would turn around and be a positive benefit for us.
2016 is 64 the first quarter, which is one extra day compared to 63 in the first quarter of 2015.
For the second quarter, 64 in the third quarter, 62 in the fourth quarter.
And that compares to 63 in the fourth quarter of 2015.
I don't have 17 in front of me by quarter.
I'm not sure we've ever seen a correlation between market share gains and what kind of pricing we can get.
We're winning market share by winning new customers on board, and by winning additional lanes, and states, and shipping locations, and so forth, from existing customers And the pricing or program that we have is individual to each customer.
And when you look at revenue per hundredweight, it's all the result of looking at the whole operating ratio of an account.
And it's hard to say, you could gain new short-haul lanes from a customer and the revenue per hundredweight be less than your average, and you can drag down your revenue per hundredweight and it looks bad from a pricing standpoint, the way that the industry, the way you all look at pricing, and hell, we might be operating the count at a 75 or 80.
On that lower revenue per hundredweight.
So it's all about pricing to the operating ratio of each individual account.
And the revenue per hundredweight is merely a result of that type of approach to pricing.
I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly, but we don't try to go into a new account by means of pricing.
Whereas we try to put a lowball offer in, and then anticipate we can get our pricing up later So we try to treat any new account just like an existing account, and go through our costing process to ensure that each account is contributing to the overall operating ratio.
And we arrive at a fair and equitable price for us and for the customer.
We just gave the 3.5% wage increase September 1.
So obviously, that will be in inflationary factor as we go through next year.
But we've long maintained that a key to our success has been taking care of our employees.
Our employees are what drives the results of the Company, that's given this best-in-class service 99% on time, cargo claims at 0.3%.
So that is something that is near and dear to our hearts, and we believe strongly in.
So we will always look at, and historically have said, so goes the success of the Company so goes our employees' success as well.
So that's something we look at and evaluate every year.
Typically it's something that goes into effect on September 1.
