January 2024 Business Update
Contributed by: Dan Vander Pol, Co-President
2023 Quarterly Metrics
2023 was quite a roller coaster ride at Oak Harbor Freight Lines. We started off the year quite slow and were actually down 7% on our bill count in the 1st quarter.
Things started to heat up in the 2nd quarter and then we had the historic closing of Yellow on July 30th, 2023. Yellow was the largest trucking company to ever file for bankruptcy after being in operation for 99 years. They had nearly 30,000 employees and it is sad to see people lose their jobs. We have been able to bring on some of their former employees and we welcome them aboard! This brings to mind that it doesn’t matter how big you are, if you are not profitable, you will fail.
With the closure of Yellow, we saw a 7-8% bump in our daily bill count and August was looking like it was going to be our best month in history. As you now know, we had a Cyber Attack on August 29th and we believe the total cost of that was in the range of $3 million, or roughly one point on our operating ratio.
Our 4th Quarter operating ratio came in at 96.87% compared to 89.36% in the 4th Quarter of 2022. Therefore, we ended the year with an OR of 93.71% on $330 million in revenue. For reference, in 2022 we had an OR of 91.98% on $324 million in revenue.
2024 Outlook
As I write this, we are just coming out of a very severe weather system that closed down most of Oregon for several days and this will have a very negative impact on our bill count and our operating ratio in January. However, when we look at 2024 as a whole, we are well positioned to bring on more freight and have a fantastic year.
We opened new terminals in both Tucson, AZ and Cedar City, UT in 2023. Both terminals are operating well with room to grow. We have also begun construction on a 54-door terminal in Patterson, CA and are hoping for it to be completed in the 4th quarter of this year. We also hope to finally complete the paving project in Portland this summer, adding some much-needed parking.
Looking at 2024 and beyond, the future is looking very bright for Oak Harbor Freight Lines! We are well positioned with high demand for our services and no other carrier covering our same footprint. Thanks for all your hard work in 2023, we accomplished great things with more great things to come!
