Great. Next up, we've got J.B. Hunt. We welcome Brad Hicks, EVP and President of Dedicated Contract Services, Josh Phelan, SVP of Truckload Operations, and Andrew Hall from Investor Relations. We welcome Brad for his fourth time to our conference, Andrew, and Josh to their first BofA event. This is J.B. Hunt's 18th time attending the conference in the 25 years I've hosted. Glad to have you here with us. Thank you very much for your continued support. And Brad and Josh, I guess let me just open it to you for your initial thoughts on the state of the market, and maybe what three key things you want us to take away from here today.
Well, good morning, Ken, and thanks again for having us. It's always a pleasure to be here. You know, when we think about the market, clearly, we've seen changes. We saw strength, I guess you could call it, starting in Q4 that have persisted through. We're seeing a pretty meaningful adjustment from a spot capacity rate standpoint that's finding its way into contract now, which is typical. We're seeing difficulty in more difficulty in the driver market today. We think that one of the three that I'll just highlight right now is just the category of regulatory. You know, that's definitely influencing 'cause quite frankly, we're not really seeing any demand lift. Now, I wouldn't suggest that we've seen a fall in demand.
I think it's been pretty steady for the past year to date, let's say. I think that we've done an excellent job on our strategy as an organization, which we're really focused on discipline growth through our operational excellence. We've highlighted that to you and everyone through our lowering cost to serve initiatives that we're proud of the progress that we continue to make there. We do feel like we have to continue to repair our margins, which is part of our strategy. That going back to the regulatory environment, as I commented there, you know, that's causing a capacity to exit really on the front of a non-domiciled driver situation that really is state by state, and everybody's kind of approaching that a little differently.
It's not really a hit the eject button, and then all that capacity exits. It's a slower drip, if you will. More recently, we've had a state like in Indiana that turned them all off. And I think even New York is contemplating what their next move's gonna be due to some, I guess, pressure on federal funding to take action. Non-dom is one category. We have the English Language Proficiency being enforced. It wasn't a new law. They're just now enforcing it to the standard it was expected to. That's causing capacity to exit. We've seen cabotage, which is where we have Mexican and Canadian-based carriers come in and run domestic freight, which is illegal and has been for many years, also being enforced.
Really there's not new laws, it's really more around the enforcement. That's what's causing, I think, the capacity tightening. Largely, we also have exits, normal exits at this part of the cycle where carriers just can't endure the current economics any longer and have to close up shop. Beyond that, you know, we continue to see pressure on the schools. You know, there's been thousands of driver training schools that have been shut down. There's been a lot of pressure on ELD providers, which really dovetails into today, I'm sure it's gotten discussed perhaps already, Roadcheck or the DOT blitz, if you call it that, kicked off today and they're highlighting that ELD is one of their key areas. Anxious to see.
I know it'll tighten up. Josh, I don't know if you want to offer any more color on the macro.
The capacity tightness is real. You know, again, we started feeling it, let's say early part of Q4. Seasonally, you expect that tightness to moderate a little bit as you start Q1, and I think it just continued on. The supply side correction for all the reasons Brad talked about, I think it's on solid footing at this point. It's translating its way into the customer market. It was slower inside the bid season. This half the bid season was really cooked when really things started to get a little more optimistic around how long that was going to stick. We see it continuing. Could get worse. I think the only really unknown is the demand side.
Yeah. Let me start off with that, Brad, cause you just, you started off by saying almost all regulatory, no demand lift was what I heard from you. Which I'm surprised. Our truck shipper survey would indicate we're kind of seeing some sort of demand improving outlook from a shipper point of view. You're just seeing it really all from the supply side coming out.
I think we saw demand in Q1.
Yeah
be better than what we would have anticipated. I think our customers did feel optimistic. What I would say is that as we've moved on from that Q1, I would say steady is the word, at least for sure in dedicated.
Yeah.
I think it does largely apply to our other businesses. What I would say, though, Ken, is that I think that we've done a fantastic job at taking market share. You know, Josh has had, what, 4 consecutive quarters of double-digit volume growth. We saw great, really strong intermodal growth in Q1. We've seen really double-digit volume growth in our brokerage segment more recently as well. Feel like we've done the right things at this part of the cycle. You know, with us focusing on operational excellence, the work that we've done on lowering our cost to serve has been really exciting.
Our entire employee base has rallied around that. You know, we've had really unique ideas that have contributed, and that manifests itself in a lot of value back for whether it be lowering our cost to our customers that can help us drive more volume into the future, whether that can help us go to the bottom line, where we absolutely need recovery in margins in all of our businesses, some more than others, in terms of how far they're off, just because of all the inflation that we've experienced. Doing those right things, I think we announced that we're up to a $130 million run rate, up from Q4 of last year, where we had noted a $100 million run rate.
You know, we're not satisfied, and we're not necessarily complete, and so maybe we'll continue to keep you apprised of that. Part two of that is we've also signaled a kind of transformation, transformational work through leveraging of technology, and we're still not quite hitting stride on a lot of those initiatives. I do think that beyond the lowering of the cost, there's more into the future that we're gonna continue to create value driving efficiencies. With our strategy being really to grow, and not having to add, and so it's kind of here's our teams and our staff, and how can we scale leveraging technology as we grow from here? We're really excited about the work that's in front of us there.
Hey, Ken, on demand, as add on to what Brad said, you know, I think if you look at the first quarter, you know, you go back to the fourth quarter, we said supply kind of drove the tightness. First quarter, I think the big change we saw was supply still continued to come out, but we saw demand a little bit better than we thought. You know, we don't give intra-quarter updates, you know, but I think Darren said on the call, you know, based on the forecast and what he was saying in intermodal, you know, we didn't see demand falling off a cliff or, you know, a big pull forward in the first quarter. You know, he kind of felt steady there.
You know, as I look across end markets, I think, you know, food continues to be good from a demand standpoint. Obviously, industrial, you know, PMI has been up 4 months in a row, industrial demand feels okay. I just don't think we'd characterize the overall demand environment as robust by any means. More steady, kind of okay. You know, as you know, the big, the big beneficiary for truckload would be housing, we haven't seen any real movement there to get us, you know, excited about that potential end market.
Yeah, I think it's marginally better. I think supply is driving the rates, though, is how we would.
Josh, what two to three signals would tell you this freight market is actually turning versus just capacity improving, aside from our truck shipper survey?
I mean, I do think we've seen a rebound in the manufacturing side. I think you said 4 straight months of expansion. You know, we are seeing quite a bit of bid activity outside the normal cycle. That's something we look at. That could be supply driven too, the churn bids.
We're seeing a lot of opportunity with our customers outside of just the main bid. That's really probably the biggest key that we focus on, obviously rates and outcome, and it's always competitive, but the ability to raise rates exists again for the first time in 3 or 4 years. Again, the customers we talked to, I think they were a little surprised that their Q1 was as strong. A lot of unknowns, obviously, with what's going on with energy prices and whatnot, but they had surprising Q1s. They're unsure about Q2, but I would say the difference between 2025 and 2026, you know, our customers, for the most part, were pretty pessimistic heading into 2025. I wouldn't say they're optimistic, but they're not pessimistic heading into 2026.
Yeah.
It gives you a little comfort that demand's gonna be marginally better.
The bids outside normal or the ability to raise rates could just be the supply side.
Could be.
Doesn't necessarily have to be signals of demand side, which is why you're saying it could still just be flat on the demand side overall. All right. Brad, let me jump to your dedicated, right? Moving to your specialty, remind me the sales target. Is it now 800 - 1,000 new tractors?
Yeah, 800-1,000 net adds.
Okay, net adds. The fleet itself was flat, right?
It was
working to offset churn.
You know, we had a good Q4 in sales and, you know, there's always timing and we don't publicly disclose the timing of when we sell a deal versus when it implements. But we had pretty decent starts in Q1, but we did have some offsets with some either downsizing at existing accounts, meddled in with a couple of losses. I am optimistic. You know, I think I've mentioned this on our Q1 call that our pipeline's sitting at record levels right now. We added 40 new names last year to the portfolio and that's always a entry point for us. That's always the hardest sell is the first one, right? With a shipper or a prospect.
When we get in our foot in the door, largely we prove our value proposition, and then we look to grow inside their organization at other locations. That's kind of been the recipe of our success for many years. I'm really excited about where we sit today. I think that we've done an outstanding job at managing our profitability. Albeit we're not quite at our range, but we're really close. Considering the backdrop of the last 3 + years, I'm very proud of our team's effort there. The fundamentals are there.
You know, we talk about discipline growth, and it's really important when we transact in Dedicated that we have the right components, we have the right economics, we have the right term, we have the right equipment, and that's what enables for that forward view of success inside a Dedicated. Feel really good about that.
Do you think that then turns 2026 into fleet growth, or is it still a focus on utilization first?
Yeah, we're not writing off. We're looking to grow as much as we possibly can. We haven't slowed any growth, although we did see the customer behavior late last year and even earlier this year be a little bit slower to their decisions. I think that the macro environment, the tariff environment had just the uncertainty, and maybe people were taking longer. You know, typically we work a deal, it's 12 - 18 months. We had deals that were at that juncture in time, say, 6- 9 months ago, and then they stalled out a little bit. That doesn't mean that they're lost opportunities, they've just been tabled.
those shippers had other priorities that revealed themselves that took their resources and time. I do think many of them have started to revisit them. We've seen a little bit of a pickup in the timing speed, thus far this year. I think the healthier, larger, pipeline is an indication that more people are thinking about, what the next 6- 18 months are gonna look like on capacity and how can they maybe think about, securing in, a dedicated solution that will make sense for them, where perhaps maybe it had been a combination of dedicated and one way or maybe just one way. Can we craft a solution that creates the right value proposition and for them to consider a longer term commitment, on that business?
Now, I do wanna say that we're not in the business of doing what I would call capacity fleets in our Dedicated segment. We feel like Josh's segment and JBT and even ICS are better suited for a pure capacity solution. We really do want it to look and feel like our version of Dedicated. Is it a private fleet conversion? Does it have the characteristics that Dedicated's gonna stick in any cycle? Because the last thing we wanna do is just grow really fast when times are good, and then immediately when the market shifts back, all that business goes from dedicated back to one way.
We're very intentional about making sure that we maintain our discipline around that. The other thing that we're seeing is the driver market is tightening. We're seeing that, not across the board, but certain markets and pockets we're seeing it be more difficult to recruit and hire. We've had to reintroduce some sign-on bonuses. That's always one of the levers when things get tough. If I take you back to kind of the peak of COVID, call it 2022, we probably had sign-on bonuses at 90% of our jobs. As of the last two years, it's been zero, and now we're starting to see those find their way back in. You know, we're seeing tightness in markets like Texas, and then also kind of the Rust Belt, think Ohio, Indiana, Michigan.
We think that cabotage is a factor in us seeing the driver tightness in those markets, along with the other regulatory things that I mentioned. You know, I think that's just how it starts, right? Ohio has long been a tough market to hire drivers, but it's tougher today than it was 6 and 12 months ago. I think you're just gonna see other parts of the country continue to be more demanding. What that means is, listen, we're gonna need driver wage. Not only do I need to repair margins, I'm gonna have to account for wages that are gonna be higher in the future than what they are today.
That's where I think it gets pretty realistic when you hear Josh talk, at least this morning in some of our other sessions, talking about what he thinks that the 2-year cycle for what rate needs will be. You know, it starts pushing 20%. You know, we've not been at our return targets for a really long time, and this business takes a significant amount of capital, as you all know, and we deserve a fair return for our shareholders and our risk.
Let me drill that down to understand that 20% then. You're talking about revenue per tractor at 2% in dedicated in the first quarter. What, ex fuel. Are you talking about.
Well, mine's gonna be a lot less than his. you know.
So that's-
Rate increases annually.
Truckload and ICS.
Yeah, I was speaking to that.
Market rates today up 20%.
Well, we think that they're gonna go up through this cycle and into next year's bid cycle. We think we'll see them be at or north of 20%.
A 2-year stack of 20%.
Yep.
Being, and then one year-
Yeah
half that. Can you get half that level to start?
I don't think you get a run rate of full. You might get a run rate of half by the end of this year, but you're not gonna realize half this year. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I think you can get double digits back half of bid season, but that won't be a full calendar year rate increase.
In Dedicated, not to, I guess I was bouncing around from company to my BU, so apologize for that. You know, most of our agreements have terms that govern the rate movement. Typically we see that being, you know, in the 2%-4%. I would expect it to probably be in the 3%-3.5% if I were gonna dial that in a little bit. When radical changes occur-
That's for this year?
That's for the end of bid season.
at bid season, then.
No bid season, just our annual-
Oh, just rotating rate.
Our annual, yeah.
As you get through the year, we'll be going run rate of about 3.5%.
Yeah.
Okay.
When we have radical shifts in other cost categories like driver pay, there are times where that doesn't keep up and we've seen those. We saw it in the peak of COVID, we saw it in the ELD mandate back in 2017, we saw it in the tightening of the market back in 2012, 2013. You know, it'll cause us to need to have different types of conversations with our customers because we want to be successful on their behalf and they wanna make sure that their trucks stay full and their freight gets moved. There are times when we have to visit with them and evaluate, do I need more than that ECI CPI? And this could be one of those environments. Certainly in some markets we're having those conversations today.
If normally you produce about 100 basis points of sequential improvement from 1Q to 2Q, I know you don't forecast, but is there anything on the timing of whether it's surcharges or the pace of rate increases that would make it a stronger or now weaker than seasonal improvement?
You gotta think about, well, one, we're not gonna give guidance there, but two, fuel, the impact of fuel, you know, it's gonna be additive to the top line, dilutive to the gross margin percent or to the margin percentage. No change in operating profit dollars for us though, 'cause it's a pass-through for us.
Yeah, it fundamentally, as fuel going back six months ago was, call it, $3.50 on the diesel, on the DOE, and now it's $5.63, I think, even as of today. That's all coming through at a 100 OR, basically. It's going to be dilutive to our OR. Don't know if that's something we would publicly convey or not. I think, did we, for Q1? Yeah, we talked about fuel. 40 basis points for Q1, I think is what it was, for the quarter. It really only flipped in March. One of the three months was negatively impacted in fuel, and it still translated to a 40 basis point degradation in OR.
Yeah.
I think you can expect normal trends from Dedicated.
I don't think there's anything necessarily that would cause it to accelerate or decelerate from our normal Q1 to Q2 progressions, other than the fact that, as Andrew mentioned, the impact that fuel has on that view. There's always timing of when are we onboard contracts and those type of things, but we've always.
Your comment on starting out to increase driver pay is not offsetting your, the speed of the rating.
Well, it's moving that fast. I mean, these are conversations that all have revealed themself in the last 30 to 45 days.
Yeah.
We're working hard in the spots that we feel like we're gonna need to take action. There's times that we gotta do that on behalf of our customer before we get the rate.
There's times that it happens simultaneous, where we get the rate and can, and pass along to the driver. It'll be a little bit of a mixed bag there, depending on which customer. Then there's some that we're gonna have to wait till the anniversary of that agreed-upon rate adjustment, and maybe that's July. If we feel like we need to move now on the driver pay, we'll do that to protect service.
Ken, that's market by market. Yeah. Then the sign-on bonuses that Brad mentioned, you know, again, that's market by market, and we're not talking, you know, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 sign-on bonuses. No. We're talking small dollars still, relative. We've gone 2 years without having to issue a sign-on bonus to a truck drivers.
It's only in a handful of cities now, and to me, that's a good sign of what is happening in the industry. And, you know, to the comment on rate, you know, we were talking about earlier, you know, you go back to the first quarter, you know, Nick Hobbs, leads highway for us, was talking about double digits in ICS. That's not new news. That's what we talked about in the first quarter. That would be the first place you'd see it. Josh would be second, is where you would see it, just because those are the businesses within our portfolio that move first from a rate standpoint. And so, I mean, I think the outlook for rates has certainly gotten better over the past few months.
You know, I think that's been echoed by every transport company through earnings season. There's more optimism there. At the end of the day, you know, it's up to what the market's gonna bear from how much we can push rate and how much rate we're able to capture.
I just wanna make sure I understand Brad's comment that you're not seeing the core, to you, Andrew, that you're not seeing the costs outpace that it would destroy the concept of the normal improvement of operating ratio improvement.
No, I think it's consistent with what you would expect.
For Dedicated.
For Dedicated.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. Let's switch over to intermodal. Talk about capacity leaving the market and the benefits of rising fuel costs and the capacity leave creates more demand.
Do we have to wait for bid cycles before seeing that volume improvement? You know, I guess revenue per load was down last quarter, ex-fuel. How quick can that inflect given the backdrop?
Revenue per load, the biggest driver there is gonna be mix. We're growing faster in the Eastern network than we are in the Transcon. Shorter length of haul, it's a, you know, lower revenue per load. If you go back to, you know, we're still living with the results of bid season last year.
Mm-hmm.
You go back to last year, we had modestly positive price in intermodal. We're still living with that from a core pricing standpoint, mix being the biggest impact on revenue probably. When does that inflect? I don't know.
I mean, we'll see what the new, the third quarter of this year is when we'll kinda get our scorecard of how we did during bid season, and that'll be the first time that, you know, you guys see the full impact flow through results. I wouldn't read into a negative or a lower revenue per load as anything more than, you know, mix is the biggest driver there.
I think if Darren Field were here, he'd want to share that, you know, we've taken rate on our head haul lanes. We've had to give rate on our back haul lanes that's what's kinda keeping us somewhat muted on the, on the macro there. We have had really good success at moving rate up on head hauls.
I think it will take time, and I wish we could predict better the timing of when the Truckload started to shift relative to the timing of bid season. You know, we're probably not gonna get a meaningful chance to move rate until the next bid cycle in intermodal. Whereas we have a lot more here and now opportunities in Truckload and in brokerage. There's many bids that constantly come back through. We don't see as much of that in intermodal, although we are seeing more than we historically do, but it's not a meaningful part of how the customers and that freight goes to bid. That gives us a chance in JBT and ICS to move the needle a little bit faster.
Let's be honest, I mean, there's still this merger potential, there's another railroad that how they're approaching the economics with their channel partners, is that putting more of a continued pressure in intermodal for it to follow a normal course? Perhaps. We'll have to wait and see. I know that UP's publicly stated that they expect to grow as part of the merger, they're out there trying to figure out ways to grow as well. Maybe that's putting a little lingering pressure on what the normal economics.
Darren Field talked on the first quarter call about, you know, different pricing dynamics between the East and the Transcon. You know, the East being more competitive with truck.
You know, we're seeing shippers be a little more receptive to price increases because that's their natural competition. You know, you're historically a 10%-15% discount intermodal to truckload in the East. I'd say right now with fuel, you're pushing 20%-25% of a discount, so I mean, quite a bit of savings
There, I do think it's important to point out that, you know, go back to last year, absent higher truckload rates and you had low fuel prices, we were still growing in the Eastern network, competing against truck. You know, we grew throughout the year. Our, in the first quarter of this year, our 2-year stack was 20% growth in the East. We're seeing a lot of opportunities for growth. A lot of that is driven by strong rail service. Having strong rail service adds reliability and to that network. The Transcon pricing is a little bit different. As Brad mentioned, there's a different dynamic going on there with the two western railroads.
It's just not, also not as competitive with truckload, and so it's not as influenced by the factors that are, you know, playing in the truckload market as the Eastern network would be.
I mean, if I'm a shipper and I'm hearing things like 20 %+ in brokerage and 10 %+ in truckload and $5.65 DOE, I would be pushing my team to do everything they possibly could to convert as much freight to intermodal. That's your greatest value proposition in a way that they can maybe recover what their budget is or, you know, overcome the other hurdles they're gonna face. The, you know, as this market goes, you know, we're hopeful that we're positioned well. We believe that we've invested, not only in our people and tech, but we've invested in capacity, and we believe we have a good runway of growth potential before we have to add one more container. You know, we can do that right here and now.
We don't have to work a deal and then place an order for that extra capacity and let it take months. You know, we can transact on our customer's needs right now. If I were a shipper, I would absolutely be challenging my team to do everything I could to convert intermodals.
not to mention it's.
Brad, let me follow up on that, right? Intermodal loads were up nearly 3% the first quarter versus a solid comp, right over 7.5% last year. You exited March with 8% growth, right? You saw some acceleration, but you were conservative on the timing of the benefits to intermodal, given fuel, your tough comp in April, you noted. Anything that should slow it down or accelerate, you know, from that pace?
I'll let you take that.
Nothing that we've talked about. you know, I go back to, I think there's certain markets and certain customers that are growing faster, you know, Darren talked about nothing we've heard from customers leads us to believe that there's, you know, a material slowdown or anything coming. You know, are we gonna grow 8% each month? No, I'm not gonna sign up for that either. you know, I think that we see optimism from our customers on what the outlook for the year could be.
All right, maybe just talk about that mix for a second, right?
Eastern network growth of 7%, you know, are you seeing benefits from switching to CSX from Norfolk, given that the competitive, you were talking about the merger? Are you seeing service gains? On the Transcon was flat. Would you expect that to improve once we pass Liberation Day?
Well, we didn't switch.
Comps, I mean comps.
We didn't switch from NS.
Not all.
CSX. you know.
Southeast
We're constantly rationalizing which is the best channel partner to move our freight on behalf of our customers. I would say that, if Darren were here, he'd be happy to suggest that both of the eastern railroads have done a fantastic job at service, they both are motivated to grow intermodal for their businesses. They believe that they want and will continue to want J.B. Hunt to be a meaningful part of that growth story. I don't know if you want to add anything else.
No, that's, yeah. I would just say I know that one switch of freight got a lot of headlines. There's freight that moves back and forth, that one just happened to get a lot of headlines. No, I don't, I don't think there's anything. We're getting good service from both eastern railroads there.
Again, I know on margins, I know you don't forecast, but I guess if we just think about typically flattish 1Q to 2Q performance at intermodal on your margins, is there anything on the cost side or a fuel delay or recapture timing that we should think about that would push us in either direction, positive or negative from normal?
Ken, I'd be happy to give you projections and forecasts, but that guy would crucify me, so I'll let him answer that.
I would point out again, fuel surcharge is gonna be, or the timing of fuel and the impact it has on the margin percentage. There'll be the same, there'll be an impact in intermodal as well. From a cost side, you know, we're continuing to execute on our lowering cost to serve, you know, a $100 million target on a $130 million run rate exiting the first quarter. No guidance on what that could be, but expect, you know, I think there's additional opportunity for continued improvement there.
Can I interject on that?
Yeah.
I think it's important. You know, when we set that out, it was about this time a year ago when we started to signal that, we've definitely felt it was important that you would be able to see it, because I think the worst thing that we could do is stand in front of you all and give lip service, and then, you know, we're saying, "No, we got it," and you can't really see it. I'm really proud of all of our 33,000 + employees and how we've rallied around that initiative, and I think you can see it, and it is making a difference, and it will help us on our journey back to repairing our margins, without a shadow of a doubt.
I think it gives us an advantage in the marketplace that we've been that successful. Honestly, we're just kind of scratching the surface on the next iteration of that, which we've signaled, which is kind of our business transformation and leveraging our investments in technology. Not entirely AI, but AI is a key component of that to get more better utilization out of our employees, to let our data flow easier with less clicks and all those things. We've been spending a lot of time focused on that. We have some early wins.
We've made some public statements about investments in companies through UP.Labs. We've stood up 2 companies that will help us, and it's largely AI oriented in terms of how it's helping us solve problems, and every area of our company has really defined out where we see the opportunities, and we're making decisions routinely on what we wanna go invest in. We're also seeing, it's kinda cool, but the pace and rate of change has been pretty quick. When we think about how we used to develop technologies that require developers and those type of things, we're leaning into the AI technologies, and we're able to do it so much faster and more efficient.
Really excited about where we sit right here and now with what the future holds for the next wave of that. I think that we'll continue to signal that, and it'll probably contribute to what we've already stated as our kinda run rate of those savings.
That may be a good leeway to the next question, which I was gonna ask Josh to jump in on ICS and Truckload. As an ops guy, maybe talk about how AI is changing how you manage the matching of freight in brokerage, the trailer pools in Truckload. Maybe talk about the different level of bots or LLMs you're using to accomplish the tasks. Is that something we'll see in improved margins near term, or is that longer term?
Yeah, I think, that's a great question. You know, we've been using, developing, working on either automation, AI bots for quite some time now. I think what's changed recently is just the confidence of what AI is capable of doing. You know, on the brokerage side, you know, we're utilizing AI and still working to develop on AI just around, you know, load prioritization, carrier matching. How do we make that better? If you think about, you know, our ability to track and trace, I think we've always had the data, but the data's been used manually, and now with the increased belief and the capability of what we can build around AI, I think it will help productivity for sure, but if it enables our people to work smarter, it will improve margins.
I think it's both on the brokerage side. Same thing for the asset side and drop trailer. You know, I would say trailer management has been very reactive, right? There's a lot of data. I mean, we do have a digital twin, if you will, of our trailer network through our tracking. If we are able to use AI for better demand forecasting, understanding dwell, understanding empty moves, making decisions instantly versus waiting and being reactive, you know, our goal is to dramatically increase our trailer turns, which again, would be productivity on the office side, on the people side. If we increase our turns, we can dramatically improve our return on invested capital at the same margins.
Just to clarify on bid season, I wanna come back to you on the bid season discussion you were talking about. I guess that's what a third is done in one Q2, Q3, Q1 Dedicated and then 10% of the fourth quarter, or is that's truck intermodal is more balanced. Maybe just refresh us more.
Well, none in Dedicated. Truckload, ICS, and intermodal, I would say typically one third, one third, one third, Q1 through Q3.
That's right.
With approx-- Well, not quite one third. Call it 30%, 30%, 30%, 10%. Dedicated is 100% our pipeline and how we create our pipeline and how we're working with those customers to solve and create a solution that creates value for them. It's not any typical annual. Now, as we have contracts up for renewal, that's when we go sit down and talk with those clients about how do we extend those and what needs to change and what other value we can bring that perhaps they're not capitalizing on for whatever reason. Maybe it's a good time to do a reoptimized delivery schedule on behalf of that customer to see if we can't remove a truck or drive utilization up.
We're always looking, you know, we have a internal proprietary program called Customer Value Delivery, CVD, we call it, and that's our continuous improvement program. That's kind of our commitment to our customers that says, "Hey, when you buy us, you're not buying us to remain the same. You're buying us and expecting us to work in your best interest to constantly be finding ways to bring value back to you," which is typically through utilization. It's always gets back to some form of utilization. You know, can we share resources with a sister dedicated account? Maybe I don't have to staff your fleet for 20 drivers every day of the week.
Maybe I can shift some of your capacity to another one, and I'll give you credits when I'm using that at a different either Dedicated customer or a different part of our company. The larger we've become and the more density we have, we're able to take advantage of those type of opportunities on behalf of our customers better. Everybody wins, right? The driver wins ’cause they stay more utilized, their paycheck remains whole, and therefore they're gonna stay with us. The customer wins ’cause we're leveraging their fixed cost of the fleet that we operate on their behalf by spreading that fixed cost over more of the variable activity that they have. It lowers their landed cost per mile.
We're motivated and incented, and I think it speaks volumes that historically speaking, our customer retention rate in Dedicated's been in excess of 98%. That's to me, the most important metric is are our customers willing to stay with us after the initial term? We renew at a very high level, which I think is a good testimony that we have created value and continue to create value.
We're over time. I'm gonna squeeze two real quick ones in. Josh, ICS lost almost $5 million in the 1st quarter, stepped down from the first 2 quarters. Thoughts on inflection and when the segment should turn profitable. I know you don't give targets, but maybe the path toward profitability.
There's a lot of momentum in ICS. You know, 10% volume growth was good for us in the first quarter. We didn't see much change in our operating expenses. It was really gross margin squeeze from the tighter truckload market.
Okay.
As we continue to get more spot opportunities and work through bid season to reprice that contractual freight, I would expect that that would be helpful for gross margin. I'll tell you, not gonna give you our plan, but we don't plan on ICS to lose money. It wasn't how our budget was built. So, you know, the expectation is that each business will generate return, and I think there's a lot of momentum in ICS that Nick's created there.
All right. Latest thoughts on the merger proposal. I guess ability for J.B. Hunt to succeed given long-standing partnerships with varied carriers, with Burlington out west and Norfolk out east.
I would just say that we are, we're confident that we are in a leadership position regardless of the outcome.
Okay.
We think that we've done a great job at managing our rail partners and how we work with them. Given the size of the market share that we represent on behalf of the shipping community, they're all motivated to want to continue to participate. I think that we'll find a way to win regardless. Beyond that, I don't think we have a public comment.
I would just say if the goal is to grow the intermodal pie overall as the market leader, I think that's a good thing for J.B. Hunt.
If I were to try to sum up real quick, I guess most of the benefits so far are regulatory driven, not really seeing demand kick in. You're focused on lowering your cost to serve the $130 million up from $100 million, leveraging tech, watch driver pay at dedicated. You're gonna try to outpace it with rate increases, it certainly can cause a squeeze depending on timing.
Yep.
Anything?
Steady as she goes. Rates are going up.
Rates are going up. Thank you very much for the time.
Thanks, Ken.
Thanks, Brad, Josh, Andrew.