Well, hello everybody. Welcome to Deutsche Bank's Industrial Conference. I am Richa Harnain. I am the Airfreight Transportation Equity Analyst here, and pleasure having you. We are here with J.B. Hunt today. We got a lot to talk about, so maybe we will just get right into it. We got Brad Delco, Andrew Hall, Stacey Griffin, who heads up. Brad Delco, CFO, Stacey Griffin does Pricing and Intermodal, and Andrew Hall, who Heads up the Investor Relations effort. Thank you all for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, maybe we can just start by getting a mark to market and how you are feeling about the state of the cycle. The team sounded quite upbeat when we heard from you about a month ago now. You have entered what has historically been a seasonal lull, though, for demand.
Just as you reflect on how the cycle went up to this period and the potential heading into peak, how do you feel? I know you are going to tell me J.B. Hunt did way better than the cycle, but yeah, just maybe frame how the cycle is going, and then we will talk about how you are outperforming.
Well, first, Richa, thank you for having us. A great set of meetings thus far and great to join you here for our webcast. Excited Stacey Griffin is joining us, who I think this is her second conference ever. We felt like intermodal is usually a popular topic and considering she prices about 1/3 of the industry volume no better person to come give some perspective on cycle and pricing opportunities ahead of us as we think about the value proposition of intermodal. Obviously, Darren has been talking a lot to investors and to the market about the value proposition, where we think it is. In terms of the cycle, I feel like we just started, right? Go back to fourth quarter, I think some of the things that we shared.
We do get forecasts from our customers, and what we noticed in the fourth quarter was our customers were very much performing in line with their forecast. What was a surprise to us was covering some of that freight, meaning the supply or available supply of capacity was getting tighter. We were attributing most of what we were feeling in the market to supply attrition. I think as we moved into the first quarter, there were a couple of anecdotes about forecasts being revised higher. I think we, at least internally, directionally, were like, "Okay, we definitely see supply correction continuing, but we do think that there is some positive elements of demand." Obviously, we have had ISM above 50 now for five or six consecutive months. The one thing that I think is really missing is housing.
As anyone that probably moves freight knows that housing starts generally create a lot of demand. I think it also has an impact on supply, right? People would rather be working in construction and being at the same job site every day versus getting behind the wheel of a truck and driving across the country. I think that we are still very much in the early innings of a supply correction. Also, I think there's opportunities for demand to get stronger. I think what you have historically seen, and I brought this point up, I think, Richa, on our last earnings call. The majority of our earnings come from intermodal or dedicated, call it 90%.
Dedicated, these are five-year contracts, fixed and variable components to those pay. That's how we get paid. A lot of our CapEx there is success driven, right? We'll get a contract from customers and go deploy capital. We underwrite all those deals to our ROIC targets. Really like that business, but it doesn't really have the sort of cyclical dynamics that I think most are accustomed to seeing in trucking. We've proven that. We have had double-digit GAAP EBIT margins for 11 consecutive years in that business. Everyone knows that intermodal pricing generally lags truckload pricing by two to three quarters. We saw a pretty meaningful inflection in our financial performance about a year ago, largely driven on things that we could control.
I think as we sit here today, I think what has us excited is when we think about most of our businesses usually lagging what we traditionally see in the transportation market. The fact that we've seen this much of an improvement in our financial performance with still a lot of tailwinds to come on the pricing side, I think is what has us excited.
Okay. Yeah, let's get into that. Brad, you reminded me what Darren said regarding J.B. Hunt's intermodal value proposition, right? Strongest in more than a decade. Maybe we can dig into that a bit more. Not over a decade ago, did we have record levels of demand for the industry during the COVID-driven boom? The comment suggests your value proposition is stronger than it was during that COVID time period. I guess, talk to us about why?
Well, sure. I think when we think about our value competition or value, we are thinking about how we compete in the market. We really compete on cost, capacity, and service. When I think of where we are today, you have high fuel prices, you have truckload pricing that has moved higher and is moving higher, and you have good rail service. I think when you combine all three of those elements, to me, that is why I think the value proposition is the strongest we have seen. Service has been great from railroads, and when you have great service and you can offer a discount on truck prices and be more fuel efficient in doing that, I think that is sort of the trifecta. Stacey, anything you would add there?
Well, maybe I will give Stacey a more pinpointed question, bring in your secret weapon, right? Given that value proposition then, incredibly interesting time, I bet, to be pricing this product.
I would love to be a fly on the wall in your department. Just maybe talk through what is different now about your pricing strategy versus maybe the last peak, and what you make of the pricing outlook going forward.
What you just described, it is interesting. It is actually really exciting.
We've certainly seen a marked uptick in the demand for J.B. Hunt's intermodal products. Really, you have to think back to the spike that happened in highway spot rates and then followed by highway contract rates, and that's really generated increased demand for intermodal services. The value proposition is huge. Quite frankly, Richa, we don't think we were able to fully reflect the value proposition of intermodal in the last 12 months. The environment we've been operating in simply didn't support it. But we have a clear line of sight on meaningful opportunities to get paid appropriately as we move into 2027. Now recognizing there's that lag.
That two to three quarter lag. So we see the opportunity that we did not see inside of the kind of great recession years that we have been in for the last few years. We talk about, and I think Darren would have shared this previously, in the 2026 bid season, the first part of the bid season, the transcon pricing world didn't respond as we expected it to. It was more competitive than we expected. While we were both positive in price and volume, it wasn't significant inside of the transcon. So I'm expecting more opportunities and better opportunities as we go forward.
Has that transcon competitiveness, has that leveled off?
Our 2026 bid season is essentially done. As we go forward in the next few months, we're really going to see how everyone is responding in this, quite frankly, very different market than what we were in this time last year. So it's too soon to tell.
Okay. Just thinking big picture about the pricing opportunity. I think intermodal historical gap between that and truckload is like 15%. Today, I think in certain markets, we're running as high as 35%. Does that mean, let me try and do math, 15%-20% type long-term pricing opportunity as you narrow back to normalized levels, or is that not the right way to think about it?
First, bear in mind a piece of that is fuel.
Okay.
Because that's an always metric.
Fair.
Fuel's going to move.
One way or the other, depending on the day of the week, but that will move. Once you fill that out, I would say this, we don't anticipate that gap getting any wider. That's just not practical. It wouldn't make sense. We have drivers too inside of intermodal. In fact, we require at least two for each load if they're doing the pickup and the delivery. I do think we'll have different magnitude in terms of the pricing cycle because of what's happening in that space. We've got to be able to cover that inflationary cost pressure.
We also have to be able to support the rail environment. One thing to keep in mind when an intermodal provider takes a rate to a customer, we're really taking a rate that's going to be shared with, in our case, J.B. Hunt, and with at least one or two railroads. There's a lot that we're addressing inside of that rate conversation.
Okay.
Yeah, just to clarify, Richa, we typically see a 10%-15% gap between intermodal and truck in the Eastern network, and we typically see about a 25% gap in transcon. Maybe just for the audience to make sure that's clear for everyone. Clearly, I think the gap, as Stacey alluded to, is wider than that, and that's based on where we are today. I think our expectation is we've really yet to see all the anecdotal numbers we heard on more recent earnings calls from truckload guys as to where their contract truckload prices are resetting. We haven't necessarily seen that in their results or performance yet, right?
I think truckload rates may continue to move up, which means that that gap, it'll create more opportunity for Stacey and her team to make sure that we're getting the right value for what service we're providing.
Does that also mean the lag could be a little longer? We are starting later in terms of when we are seeing it in actual results, so it should flow through into your results maybe later? Are you optimistic that 2027 bid season will bring those kinds of opportunities?
Well, I think Stacey tried to touch on that. I think the real big move we saw between supply and demand really was triggered in May around Roadcheck, and I think that is when we saw a 20% or 30% intra-month move in spot rates. At that point, you are sort of at the tail end of our bid season. I do not know, as Stacey was alluding to, that we were able to, let us not take advantage, but let the market recognize where prices were going to land. I think as her and her team start back up in October, working on next year's bid season, there will be a lot more opportunities. I love what you said at some of our meetings today about what has your summer been like, what are we calling it?
The summer of many mini-bids. So many mini, M-A-N-Y, mini M-I-N-I, because we have had such tremendous opportunity come at us. I guess for the pricing team, this summer is our lull, and because of what has happened in that highway space and our customers' uncertainty around capacity, we have had lots of opportunities coming to us to price business we have not seen before, reprice business that we saw earlier in the year, find solutions for our customers to move freight that has been moving over the highway into intermodal. So, it has been a very active summer and it has been a great opportunity for us. Brad talked about the opportunity just to adjust prices in front of that. The way our bid season works is in Q4, we reprice about 10% of our business, and then we reprice about 30% in each of the following three quarters.
At the end of March, we will have repriced around 40% of our business, and that will be under this new kind of understanding of the structural changes that have happened in terms of driver supply, with an entire industry understanding of kind of the permanence of that, and that we still do not know exactly where that is going to go. So we see a lot of opportunity there as we move forward. It will come fully through the end of the year, and then it will start showing up once we get into.
Okay. On the many mini-bids, is that for more immediate sort of transactions, or is that something that we will really see around the peak season in Q4?
It is for both. We have seen a large uptick in new customer names. That is always exciting. It is certainly very exciting for our sales organization. New customer names, maybe customers who have not explored intermodal before. A lot of that is Eastern network, but certainly a lot of the same names. We are looking at that freight that is the last to convert to intermodal, that they are looking at now. It is a long length of haul, but maybe it is going to our customer's customer.
Having consistent on-time delivery is critical. They have historically moved it highway, and now they are looking at an intermodal option. In the transcon space, J.B. Hunt has the Quantum solution with BNSF that is targeting that customer delivery freight where consistency around service and delivery is most important. It is not about speed, it is about consistency. If it is seven days, it is seven days every single time. They are delivering it on time. Much greater interest inside of that. New customers, we are seeing projects, and we are seeing customers specifically look for, "This is what I have moving over these next few months. What solution can you give me?
We are seeing those capacity concerns pop up for immediate needs, for traditional peak season needs, but then just looking for that long-term conversion as well.
Okay, thanks. Oh, yeah. Go ahead.
Does the service quality finally getting better? They also talked about for many years about that migration or service grade, I think all shifted. Is that what happens, or is it price forcing people who are just looking a little further?
The underlying rail service is good, and it has been good for about two, three years now. If you had asked that question two, three years ago, it was definitely a different answer. It was a source of great frustration for intermodal carriers, for the railroads, and certainly for our customers. What we heard from our customers is, "I need intermodal rail service to be good, not just when volumes are low across the industry, right? But as volumes start lifting up, that service has to be stable." That is what they are experiencing right now, which is really helping our customers have that modal conversion conversation inside of their own organization.
Yeah. I want to give Darren Field a lot of credit because he was sitting in a lot of these investor meetings three years ago, and he would always joke and say, "Well, I have the same conversations with folks at the railroad," which is, of course, we all like, "Rail service was good last week. Where is the volume this week?" That is just not how that works, right? It takes time. They want to dip the toe in the water, right, before they jump in. Here we are now, three plus years of really good, consistent rail service. Yeah, I think we are coming off of one of the worst freight recessions we have ever seen, and in 2025, J.B. Hunt did an all-time record amount of intermodal volume. In our most recent second quarter, we grew Eastern volumes 16%, Andrew? Against a +15 comp.
I really feel like the highway-to-rail conversion story is playing out. I think there is lots of growth. We have talked about 7 million-11 million loads of opportunity out there. This is what Stacey and her team look at and price each and every year. This is volume that we see that we think could and should go from highway to railroad, and the overwhelming majority of that freight that we see is in the East. You are sort of seeing that now play out with, I think we have five consecutive quarters of double-digit volume growth in our Eastern network. Hopefully both CSX and Norfolk Southern see and appreciate the opportunity and the business that we are creating and serving together.
I definitely think I want to be mindful of walking before we run, but just in light of that service improvement being offered by you and your rail partners, we talk about getting back to historical ranges of the gap between intermodal and truckload, 10%-15% in the East and 25% transcon. Can it be better than that if the service product is better than it was in prior up cycles?
In theory, yes. But I think we would really need to see very consistent service. But again, at the end of the day, as Stacey alluded to, speed is one factor. I think consistency of service is really what customers are looking for. As long as we can be consistent at a discount to truck, because it will be slower, then I think it is a really strong value proposition.
Okay. Maybe we can switch gears and talk about some of the bottlenecks for the industry. You discussed the tightness around drivers, particularly drayage drivers in the market at large. That was on your last call. We believe a lot of your competition relies more on that type of third-party lift versus you. Is that creating an opportunity for share shift?
Yes. Absolutely does. It is not just the opportunity for share shift. Our drayage operations and the efficiency we drive with that really does give us a competitive advantage. We outsource in J.B. Hunt Intermodal about 10%-15% of our drayage moves, and we have done that intentionally. We could make that number a lot worse, but then we would be building the church for Easter Sunday. It is not the most efficient way to do it. When there are peaks, we want to be able to tap into those outsourced freight carriers as well. It is important that we have them as part of our structure. That really gives us an advantage, certainly on our service, which is very meaningful.
We have a driver hiring machine, which allows us to tackle the challenges that are existing right now in the industry in a meaningful way with how we recruit, vet, hire our drivers, and the investments we make into retaining those drivers, which is kind of where it starts.
Yeah, Richa, I love sharing this, but Kirk Thompson was, I think, a 52-year employee of J.B. Hunt. He was our CFO, CEO, Chairman, now honorary founding director. Back when I was in your seat and covering the stock, Kirk would just make things very simple. He would say, "Well, let us just be honest, Brad. There is only two types of freight markets, one with too few freight and one with too few drivers. Which one would you rather be in?" Right now, we are in a market where there is a driver shortage. Yes, every single transportation company is facing driver wage inflation and driver pressure. You are ramping up your hiring teams, you are ramping up your people teams because he who has the driver wins. J.B. Hunt has very attractive jobs.
We say this in most meetings, that more than half of our trucks are day cabs, which means people will come to our terminal, park their car, jump in a truck, work a shift, come back to the terminal, get in their car, and go home. Our dedicated average length of dedicated, we have 12,600 trucks. I think our average length of haul, Andrew, is like 180 miles. I think that our driving jobs are typically viewed very favorably in the industry, and so I think that has been an advantage for us in recruiting and keeping the best drivers on the road.
Along with that adage, yeah. You go first.
Richie, go ahead.
The intermodal margin, like long-term guide, whatever you call it.
Margin target range is 10%-12%.
10 to 12. That obviously well for these regulatory functions have been ruled upon or enacted. I really can't think of better to set up for that to be better than 10 to 12.
I was about to say that.
Yeah.
Two years ago, people said there's no way we'll ever get to those margin targets. Now people are like, "Why can't we go higher?" First of all, if anyone knows me, they know how much passion I have and how much I love talking about margins. Or not. We think, and what really informs our decisions as to what we're targeting in our cost structure, as well as where we feel like our margin should be based upon our businesses, is truly based on returns on capital. Based upon what capital we think is required that we have to continue to invest in our chassis, our trucks, our terminals, our maintenance infrastructure, a 10 to 12 margin, we believe is a very fair and appropriate return on the capital we take, particularly for risk, right? We are all in the business of managing risk.
Clearly, putting 80,000 lbs on a highway has proven to be a very risky business, so we have to be compensated appropriately for that risk.
I think that is a really good answer.
Our growth should be better.
Yeah.
Yeah. We would love to be in our 10%-12% margin range, and if we can still execute and believe we will stay very focused on executing our lower cost to serve initiative, we should be able to grow faster. Clearly those opportunities are being presented to the team with, again, setting record volume coming out of a freight recession.
Just to tie my next question into that margin framework, back to the driver point. Inflation, do you think that driver pay increases that we are having to implement, albeit in selective markets still nothing broad based, per what you last said. Do you think it is similar to what we saw during COVID? Is it more manageable?
I think it is different. I think for the first time, we saw real labor challenges across not just truck driving, but warehousing. I think all industries were facing some sort of labor challenge during COVID. In terms of the driver challenge, I think it will be difficult so long as we continue to enforce the regulations that exist today. Keep in mind, this supply that has come out of the market is not a function of new regulation, it is just the enforcement of existing regulation. Where we go from here, not quite sure, but it feels like we are going to see more supply come out of the market as we enforce non-domiciled CDLs, obviously cabotage. What are some other ones, Andrew, I am missing?
ELDs.
CDL schools.
ELDs.
ELDs. The self, quote, "certification" that, yes, this thing is compliant and maybe they are not.
Okay.
Lots still more to come on the supply side.
Great. Maybe let's talk about peak. Your expectations heading into the peak months. These mini bids are going to start showing up, but how do volumes typically shift from first half to second half? How could this year be better, or we've already talked about how it could be maybe better, but how could it be maybe worse than normal? Any other things you're worried about?
I'd say there's nothing I'm worried about. Every peak season is just a little bit different, a little bit nuanced. If you look at, just generally speaking, the traditional peak, as measured by Southern California.
The Southern California outbound through those retail importers will typically surge anywhere between, call it 10% and 25% during peak season.
It's a fairly sizable range, but I think that range effectively captures what is considered normal over the course of multiple years. There could be other factors at play from year -to -year, whether it's a shift between Eastern ports and the Western ports, although anything that's happening there is kind of done for. Consumer spending could still be a surprise, one way or the other. Rail velocity has been very stable and good, so we don't necessarily anticipate any challenges there. We feel like it's going to be normal. There's just a range of what normal is.
In terms of it being maybe better than normal, peak surcharges. The way I understand it is last year, around July, was when you introduced them to customers.
But during the peak season, I think customers could generally work towards the limit of those peak surcharges and then maybe solve them.
Solve around you because they didn't want to avoid paying the fees. Now, with the cycle much tighter, maybe it'll be more difficult for them to navigate that. Should we expect better from peak surcharges this year versus last?
Sounds like guidance.
Yes.
No.
Be careful about what I say here. I do want to speak to peak surcharges specifically and how we navigate that, because it is absolutely something that we navigate with our customers every year. The whole idea around peak surcharges is around recovering costs. There is a significant amount of cost associated with moving those incremental empty containers into Southern California, specifically, to handle those above normal volumes. We will do unnatural things with our drivers as well, and we will outsource more, but we will literally fly drivers into Southern California to work for a couple of weeks at a time to support peak season. We do a lot of unnatural moves to drive velocity and cover our customers. There are costs associated with that. There are costs that the railroads incur, and a peak season surcharge is the mechanism for recovering that cost.
In my seat, from a pricing perspective, I hear very consistently that our peak season surcharges are above what the industry norm are. I am not in a position to speak to what others do, but we are in a cost recovery effort when we are talking about peak season surcharges. Certainly, our customers are looking for our solutions this year. We have been having those conversations with the customers since they did their bids. Particularly in the first half of this year, as the customers are planning, "What is my 12-month solution for capacity based on what my forecasts are?" We talked about what that peak season structure would look like inside of their business, trying to remove uncertainty for them and help facilitate the planning.
Mm-hmm. Understood. Regarding all these sort of unnatural moves you are doing, heaven and earth for your customers, which is kind of what you do. Just again, tell us about the competitive landscape. Are your competitors able to keep up? Do they have the resources? From our perspective, it seems like it is challenging out there, especially if you are reliant more on third party drayage, struggling and things like that.
I think right now, genuinely, I was going through this as well, but I think the industry is, you have to sort of balance, your customer really wants you to be all things, but then also in the same way, doesn't necessarily want to pay you to be all the things, and you have that sort of tug of war. I think our industry typically sees some of the inflationary costs hit them first, whether to prove out your service or prove out the model, ahead of when the pricing comes. I do think right now you are seeing an industry that is struggling with hiring drivers.
Our management team meets every week. We met last week. I told you all that the Kirk Thompson quote, it's a good thing, generally speaking, but our driver need is the strongest or the highest it has been all year, which means our driver need is the strongest it's been since 2022. That sort of tells you, we've probably more than doubled, if not tripled the size of our driver recruiting team. They're hitting the phones. We're increasing advertising and marketing to get drivers in. This is all so we can get ahead and make sure that we are prepared to meet what we're anticipating to be strong demand and to meet what I think our customers expect us to do from a growth perspective.
I think we're sort of in this limbo stage where you are seeing some of those cost challenges hit some of the businesses, but you're having to go out and try to get cost recovery from customers. I know we certainly have opportunities to do that with peak season, but I think we're going to have a lot of opportunities to do that once our next round of bid season starts in October.
Okay. Can we switch gears and talk about ICS and truckload a bit? They're growing volumes there quickly. You talk about how those are more leading businesses for you. Purchase transportation costs remain headwinds. What has to happen for that growth to translate into meaningful operating profit, still operating well below what you saw during the last peak in those, and how quickly can customer pricing catch up?
ICS is our brokerage business, and I think generally where pricing is more transactional. We can move price a little bit faster in that business. I believe the second quarter was kind of like the squeeze quarter, if you will, for a broker, right? You're going out and buying capacity at spot. You actually have some contract mix in terms of how you're getting paid by your customer. We saw pretty meaningful year-over-year gross margin pressure. I think the opportunity is just, one, resetting price and making sure you're buying most efficiently out in the market. We have been able to scale that business. I think the one thing I am proud of is it was the first quarter we've made money in how many, Andrew?
Many, many.
Couple of years. We did that when I think you saw probably peak pressure on that relationship between revenue and PTE. To the extent, like you mentioned, or you were alluding to the July blip.
Yep.
July is always the second worst freight month of the year besides February. I am sure you saw margins improve in July if you are running a brokerage business because it just was not as tight.
Typically, that is very seasonal and very normal before things start picking up in mid-August as you go into peak. I think that team has been working really hard at getting back to consistently being profitable, and we got one quarter in and hoping to keep the momentum going.
You would be disappointed if it wasn't in the black again this quarter.
If I answer that, I think I'd be giving guidance.
All right. Let's talk about the broker liability issue. ICS, very large broker in the market. We had one of the largest nuclear verdicts in the industry brought against your peer, C.H. Robinson, recently. Just what do you make of the unfortunate outcome of the case and implications for your business, ICS, and maybe the industry at large?
Yeah. I think it's a big headline, and it puts a big spotlight on each broker's process around how they select their carriers. I think bottom line is you have to make sure you have a very consistent and firm process, and it's airtight. To the extent you're making exceptions as to why you did or did not hire a carrier to haul a load, you just need to make sure you're well documented on your reasons and got to feel really good about your team and your safety culture. I think one thing, J.B. Hunt has a very strong culture. J.B. Hunt has a very strong safety culture. We've been reporting, and this is outside of brokerage, but we've been reporting on our DOT preventable accidents per 1 million miles.
First year after we rolled out inward-facing cameras, and I believe we're one of the only publicly traded companies with inward-facing cameras. Richa, you might be able to correct me if I'm wrong there. We saw a 25% improvement in our DOT preventable accidents per a million miles. That was a record safety performance year for us. The year after that, we improved it further, 3%. The year after that was 2025. We've improved that further 10%. I think Andrew, in the second quarter, we said year -to -date, we're 11%- or double digits better than last year. So we're on pace to have a fourth consecutive year of record safety performance. Our industry has to manage risk, and putting 80,000 lbs out on the highway each and every day is a meaningful risk to our motoring public.
So we have to make sure we're hiring the best drivers, we have to make sure that we're training our best drivers, and we have to make sure we're keeping bad actors out of our industry. I think there's just. I'm glad to see a lot of energy around that- both in Washington as well as across our business.
Okay. Let's talk about cost savings. Coming up less, which I think is natural as you grow. We move further into an up cycle, less significant is paid to cost takeout, but it is a good story here. Like you said, you started generating strong returns even before the cycle started to turn. But just talk about what else is left there, talk about what inning you feel like you're in. $130 million run rate?
$135 million.
$135 million, yep. Where do we go from there?
I think that, Shelley recently was talking with our team at our town hall. Our cost to serve initiative wasn't a one-year, one and done type of event. I think it's more of a mindset and, Richa, kind of goes back to what you were asking. If we can be competitive in lowering our cost to serve, it's just going to allow us to grow faster. When we can grow faster, it creates more opportunities for our people.
We obviously are a very people-focused organization. We believe we take care of our people, they take care of our customers, and takes care of the business, and everybody in this room would be very happy with the outcome of how we perform there. What inning are we in? I think we are probably through a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of the $100 million that we originally identified. Obviously, we exceeded the publicly stated target. I think the real challenge for us now is as we are growing and as we are scaling, making sure we stay very disciplined to our cost metrics and we stay in those ranges. As we scale, we can scale in a way that allows more of a price to help repair our margins.
That is one of our three priorities for the year, is to continue to repairing our margins. What is not really in terms of where we are very early innings, I think, is as we think about all of the processes we have across our organization and where we think technology and particularly AI can help us. We think AI has a lot of opportunity to drive improvements in our processes and take out cost and give our people better opportunity to do more meaningful work.
I think we are early in that stage and, hopefully, more to come that we can share in the future.
Okay, cool. CapEx, you pre-funded a lot of that. I think that is part of the allure to the J.B. Hunt story for sure. I guess if you continue to grow at a similar trajectory as your impressive first half suggests, how long before you need to start investing in more equipment? Until then, is 5% CapEx to sales the right rule of thumb?
We shared this, what is it as a percent. I think it depends on the pricing and the fuel environment, but $700 million feels about right when I think about what our maintenance CapEx is. That is net, so that is gross CapEx less proceeds. As I mentioned in Dedicated, a lot of our CapEx is success-based, so we will go out and sign a five-year contract. What is in that contract is the equipment, obviously, whether it is specialized or standard equipment. Then we will go out and procure that equipment in order to meet the needs of that new contract. So my hope is that our CapEx starts trending up a lot because I have to fund a lot of the growth that- that's coming in Dedicated.
Brad Hicks recently talked about seeing a record pipeline there, so that has us excited about, I think, deploying capital and what we think are very good return type of business.
For intermodal, obviously, we have plenty of intermodal containers to grow into, but we will continue to need to buy and grow our chassis count and replace trucks, but most of that should be captured within our maintenance CapEx. That's sort of the $700 million that I laid out.
Do I want to tell you when I think we're going to need to buy more containers? I don't know. But if we keep growing like we are, it's not as far out in the future as we thought it was maybe a year ago. So growth has been good. First double volume growth quarter since 2014 in the second quarter. So, I think it just, again, speaks to what we just, we started the conversation with, which is the value proposition of intermodal is quite strong right now.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's switch gears, talk about autonomous trucking real quick. You've invested in technologies. In fact, I think one of your partners is presenting next door. What do you say to folks that consider this as something that threatens maybe the terminal value for your partners in railroads? Brad, I know you feel sort of passionate about this topic, and I think you do a good job addressing it, so talk to us about that.
Well, I think there's still a lot of unknowns. What is it going to cost?
I think we really like what we see in terms of the technology, and we think the technology is real, and we think there are real safety benefits to that technology.
Why can't we apply some of that technology to the trucks we already have today on the road to make them even safer? I think that's something that needs to be explored. We think that autonomous trucks have an opportunity to expand the addressable market in intermodal, right? If you have long drays that make a certain intermodal move not as economic as maybe truck or is there circuitous miles, then you can bring autonomy into play there. But at the end of the day, again, I'm not a physicist, but steel on steel creates less friction than rubber on road, and so the most fuel-efficient way of moving freight will be rail. It doesn't matter who is or is not driving the vehicle, it's just going to always be more fuel efficient to move it over the rail versus the highway.
I think that there will be opportunities for a lot of new technologies and entrants to sort of create value in transportation. It is a very large market, and there's plenty of opportunity for us to grow organically in this large addressable market.
Okay. Speaking about growth opportunity, maybe we can end with this Transcon rail merger that is being proposed right now, made some steps forward in recent months. Your view on the evolution of partnerships and just how you see this affecting J.B. Hunt, especially if your primary partner in the West has a product that could prove to be maybe less attractive next to a seamless end-to-end rail product.
A lot in that question. I would just say, we have been pretty neutral on this, and we think that there are opportunities and risks that come with some of the unknowns. I think our teams are still looking at and reviewing all the facts and filings, and as you know, there are many pages to them. At the end of the day, I think what I am encouraged about is railroads need real, meaningful opportunity, value, and growth with intermodal, and I think who they partner with is going to be very important. I think the key to running a successful intermodal business is having density, and in order to have density, you have to have a lot of volume. Thankfully, we do have a lot of volume. I think we have proven an ability to create a lot of value for our customers.
We are going to be very mindful of what is in the best interest of our customers and make sure that we are doing what is best for them, going forward.
Maybe to come at me directly, I think you have given a helpful stat on how much of your business is actually true end-to-end Transcon versus just stops in the middle, right? It is not like Can you remind me of that?
Have we given that?
Andrew, you've definitely given that.
We have? Yeah. I don't think we've provided that.
All right, fine. Well, TBD there, but all right. With that, I think we're up to time. Thanks so much for your time today, and for participating. Stacey, it was great to have you.
Thank you.
And a fresh perspective. Thanks for everyone in the room.
Great. Thank you, Richa.