Great. Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you all for being here this morning. If you, for those of you that don't know me, my name is Joe Haefele. I work with Steph Moore on the Jefferies team, helping to cover the transport side, and we're pleased to have the RXO team here with us. We've got CEO Drew Wilkerson and Chief Strategy Officer, Jared Weisfeld. Guys, if you wanna give a brief introduction and maybe give a thirty-second overview of RXO, where we stand today, and then I can jump to some Q&A.
Yeah. Good morning. I'm Drew Wilkerson, Chairman and CEO of RXO. RXO is a spin-out of XPO Logistics. We did it at a great part of the cycle. It was November of 2022, and we've now been in a downturn since we've done the spin-off of a freight recession. So it, it has been an interesting time and a fun time to be able to do it, because for us, if we can build our base at the bottom of the cycle, we like the setup and what it creates for an inflection in an upcycle. If you look at RXO, there are three main components to our business. We're led by our truck brokerage business.
We're the third largest truck brokerage, so if you think of helping shippers get things from point A to point B, we work with over a hundred thousand carriers, on a monthly basis, as far as how we're doing that. The second part of our business is managed transportation. This is where it is a complete outsource of a portion or all of a customer's business, and we essentially become their transportation department. We love the managed transportation business because, one, we get access to a lot of data, which helps us in our other lines of business, but also, if we're doing our job well, managed transportation gets to act as a customer to the rest of our other lines of business, and then the last line of business is our last mile business.
If you look at last mile, we are the leader in that space. So think about big and bulky goods, washer, dryer, refrigerators, stoves, going into someone's house, doing the installation, and again, that's an asset-light business that is doing that. So if you think of the largest brands that are doing business on the big and bulky side, they start their conversation with RXO because we've got a network that nobody else has. We've got locations that put us within a hundred and twenty miles of 90% of the U.S. population.
That's great. I hate to, you know, maybe start with some macro, but I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the trucking cycle here, so-
I thought I started with the macro.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to double-click on it a little bit. So maybe from your seat, you know, how are you assessing the current state of the freight cycle, and what are the leading indicators maybe that you're looking for? You know, we're all waiting for a turn. At some point, what are the things you guys are laser-focused on trying to kind of get the timing of that and the shape of the recovery?
Yeah, I don't think, well, one, the last part of your question, I don't think anybody's getting the timing or the shape of the recovery right at this point. You know, I've been doing this for 20 years, and there's never been a freight cycle that has been down as long as what this one has been since I've been doing this. Now, whenever you look at it, this is still a cyclical business, and it's still built off of supply and demand, so nothing has changed in terms of that. Some of the key metrics that we watch on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, is what is happening with tender rejections? So if you think about loads that are getting tendered out from a customer, how often are they getting rejected?
And typically, whenever that starts to hit double-digit range is whenever you start to see a little bit of volatility in the market. We haven't been there for the last almost three years of what that's been. So if you look at tender rejections right now, I think they're sitting around 6%. Now, that's up on a year-over-year basis, it's up on a two-year stack, so it is moving in the right direction, and right now, what you're seeing is more of a slow, stairstep recovery than a sharp inflection. And then, you know, outside of tender rejections, we also watch load-to-truck ratio. Typically, whenever that hits six to seven to one, it correlates with tender rejections hitting 10%.
Got it. Drew, you just mentioned this is, you know, a three-year freight recession, one of the longest in your history, being in the industry. You know, what has made this cycle so different? What has caused this downturn to be so long? And at this point in the cycle, is it still a supply issue, are we still oversupplied, or is the demand side really the question that we're waiting for?
For two years, we told you that there was too much capacity out in the market. For the last year, we have probably been one of the only ones that have said, "We actually think capacity is in an okay state." It is more on the demand side. If you look at demand, we're below 2019 levels, so take COVID out. You had the COVID highs, but if you look at 2019 and 2018, we're below those levels of where we were at. Capacity, if you look at seated drivers that are actually operating out on the road, that's in line with what it was in 2019. So for us, we look at this more on the demand side than the supply side.
For our business, you know, when you think about what drives it, retail and e-commerce is a huge piece of our business. Automotive is a good size and a good portion of our business. We do a good bit of manufacturing and industrial and home-building supplies. And then from the Coyote acquisition, we picked up a lot of food and beverage. That was not one of our core verticals at RXO, but it was at Coyote. That business was built off of food and beverage. So when you look at what the makeup of our business is, we've probably been hit the hardest on the automotive side, as well as on the home building side.
Great, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I think tariffs comes up a lot also in supply chain, so maybe if you could give a rundown of maybe the impact of tariffs you're seeing on your business and the extent that you have visibility into the shifting freight flows, and trade patterns. You know, what are you guys seeing on the ground? What are you hearing from your customers as they're navigating this tariff environment?
So we talked earlier this year in terms of-
T ariffs creating shipper uncertainty, right? And ultimately, you know, when you look at what's happened from April to now, I think what we said a couple weeks ago on our earnings call was, you know, we are seeing some incremental clarity, given what's gone on with respect to trade policy. So I think that the confidence is starting to build on behalf of the shippers. Question is, does that eventually translate into consumer demand, industrial production? I think that's still to be determined, but I think we are seeing incremental confidence on behalf of the shippers, given the clarity we've seen on trade policy, which at this point we've, you know, struck multiple trading deals with our largest trade partners across the globe. So, that, that's how I'd characterize it.
Got it. And is there an opportunity for RXO to serve as sort of a supply chain partner in this period of uncertainty? And maybe a broader question of, you know, how we should think about brokerage and scale and being able to kind of partner with these smaller companies and, you know, help them serve in this time of uncertainty?
I think when you look at our model, you know, volatility in the market is a good thing. If the market is moving up or down, that's a really good thing for our business if, and that creates opportunities to create solutions in those supply chains. If you think about the market moving up and capacity tightening, what that means is what I started out talking about with tender rejections, if we're in a good position with those customers, which we are, we have great relationships. Our top customers have been with us for sixteen years on average. The spot loads, as those tender rejections go up, come to us, and those are typically at a much higher gross profit per load.
If the market's falling, like what you saw in 2022 as the market started to fall, what that means is, at that point, you're holding the line on your contractual rates, and you're pulling down purchase transportation. Now, when you're in a steady state of a downturn, there's a little bit. That's probably the pain point for us, but anytime the market is moving up or down, that gives us the opportunity to create solutions for our customers, so we love living in a period of volatility.
Got it. You know, also, maybe if we could talk about your, you know, your tech stack, your investment in technology. In the past, you had talked about 97% of loads created or covered digitally. You know, how do you see technology and using technology as a competitive advantage for RXO, and, and how are you pushing the envelope, you know, today to kind of continue to grow that?
Yeah, so we view our investment as tech in technology as table stakes. When you think about how much we're spending in tech per year, I think last quarter, we talked about how we're spending about $100 million per year in our investments in technology. And, you know, the way we think about it fundamentally in terms of our investment in technology, it's the combination of technology and people. So it's not just leveraging technology. Leveraging technology is critical, and it's important, but it's also marrying that with our people in terms of. You think about the brokerage industry, the customer relationships. Our top 20 customers have been with us for 16 years on average, so I think it's that combination.
But when you then you drill down into technology, how we think about it is holistically across how we use it internally, how we use it to help our customers, and how we use it to help our carriers. In terms of how we use it internally, we've been leveraging machine learning for over a decade. How we leverage that from a pricing algorithm standpoint, how we think about leveraging AI, agentic AI, generative AI. We think about sales enablement. How do we make our people more productive? That's mission critical, and you think about what we've seen from a productivity standpoint. Over the last two years, our productivity is up over 45%, so loads per person per day. Bringing on more volume without adding headcount in that linear fashion allows you to have really strong incremental margins over time.
You think about how we're leveraging it from a customer side in terms of the ability to go ahead and have that connectivity with our customers, and our customers range from anywhere from Fortune 100 down to SMB. With the acquisition of Coyote, you know, SMB was about 20% of their volume, so having access to a wide variety of customers and enabling that connectivity with our tech stack is critical. And then on the carrier side, the ability to go ahead and, you know, have RXO Go, the mobile app, across our carrier ecosystem, you know, which leads into that 97% of loads created or covered digitally. You know, it's also just not about the number of carriers that we have on the platform. As Drew mentioned, you know, over 125,000 carriers on the platform.
What's the engagement with those carriers, right? How often do they come back to the platform? When the carrier comes on to RXO Connect, they're coming back 70% of the time the following week. We're thinking about it pretty holistically across those three cohorts.
Got it. Maybe piggybacking off of that, you know, talking about the digital capabilities, a couple of years ago, there was a big push for these digital-first, digital-only brokers. I'm thinking of the Convoy and the Transfix of the world. You know, what do you think in hindsight has been the learnings from those digital-first brokers versus what, you know, you guys and some of the bigger brokers are doing today with technology?
Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you what the learnings for them was, 'cause we're not in their boardrooms. I can tell you for us, you know, we built the business off of strong technology and strong operators, and it was never one or the other for us, and so for us, this is still a people business. Relationships matter. I talked about our top customers being with us for sixteen years. They're not doing business with a robot. Now, they want business to be automated, but when you're talking about somebody that has a history of creating solutions, they want somebody on the other side of the table as they're having those conversations, and what they're doing.
If you look at our technology from our pricing algorithms, we've brought in some of the best technologists in the world, people who have built pricing algorithms for hotels and the airline industries. But we partnered them with great operators because they don't know the business well enough, and I think that if you look over the last decade, that's been some of our secret sauce, that it was never technology or operations. It was being able to build from the ground up with strong technology, the best technology in the industry, as well as having operators who have a lot of experience in what they're doing and seeing multiple different market cycles and the ability to move our pricing dial, not just once a quarter, not just once a month, once a day.
Our pricing algorithm moves every minute as far as what it should be pricing to the customer and the carrier.
Okay, thanks. Maybe marrying kind of the three-year freight recession here and using technology to increase productivity, you know, what are you guys doing today on the cost side to kind of manage your own costs here at the bottom of the cycle?
Yeah, so when you think about the SG&A efficiencies that we've had, right? How we're thinking about the business, I think I would go back to, you know, Drew's opening remarks, right? We are thinking about how to go ahead and prime the business for incremental operating leverage. How do we make sure that, you know, for the next downturn, that we're troughing at higher EBITDA margins than we were this year, right? So going ahead and putting in an efficient cost structure that makes sense across all market cycles, right? So you think about the cost actions that we've taken. We've talked about on the Coyote side with respect to the acquisition, right? More than $70 million of total cash synergies. So that's comprised of $60 million of operating expenses and $10 million of CapEx.
So heading into next year, you'll see a $10 million reduction in Coyote CapEx. Cumulatively, you'll see a $20 million reduction heading into next year. And then on the cost side, in terms of operating expenses, you know, embedded within our Q2 results included $50 million of operating expenses that were already taken out, so call it $12.5 million or so per quarter, with another $10 million coming out later this year, associated with the rest of the tech integration as we combine the platforms, decommissioning Coyote's legacy platform, Bazooka, and putting everything onto RXO Connect, which will be substantially complete here by the end of the month. So we made a ton of progress with the integration. But I think it's also not just that, it's also...
You think about just this continuous mindset of continuous improvement, right? How do we go ahead and make sure that we're always optimizing the cost structure? You think about the ability to go ahead and leverage technology that Drew and I just talked about, and continue to do that in a way that is efficient from a cost structure standpoint. I think there is still significant more opportunity as it relates to cost, as well. So that's how we think about it.
Great, thanks for that answer. And how do you think about that cost structure, maybe, you know, flexing in an up cycle? You know, your ability to take on more loads per day in an up cycle with your current cost structure, you know, how quickly can you, do you need to add on more headcount? You know, how should we think about the cost structure evolving in an up cycle?
Yeah, so we're staffed for growth currently, and I think leveraging that technology is key to ensure that, you know, one, we're staffed for growth, but then when the up cycle does come, how do we go ahead and make sure our people continue to be productive and be more productive in leveraging that tech? And we talked about productivity being up, you know, 45% over the last two years in terms of loads per person per day. You know, there will be a point where, you know, depending on the strength of that up cycle, will we have to add more labor? For sure, but do we do it in a way that is efficient, so you've got that relationship that makes sense in terms of contribution margins, where you're adding headcount at a lower rate relative to volume growth? And this business is all about incrementals.
If you think about, you know, the 2.7% EBITDA margins that we posted last quarter, you know, in the brokerage business, depending on, you know, whether it's attributable to volume or price, you could have incremental margins that can be in excess of 75%, right, in terms of that flow-through from gross profit to EBITDA. So making sure that you've got that right cost structure and you're optimizing for incremental contribution margins, I think allows for, you know, pretty strong cross-cycle profitability.
Great. You know, in the past, I think one of the closely followed kind of metrics was this broker penetration of the broader truckload market. You know, where do we stand on that today, you know, in the bottom of this cycle, and where do you see that going, Drew, over the long term?
Yeah, so if you take a step back and look at whenever I started in the industry, I think it was at like six or seven% of brokerage penetration into the overall for-hire trucking market. Today, it's sitting in the low 20s. I think that you'll see it get into the 30s in the near term, over the next few years, and I think longer term, you'll see it getting to the 40%. If you look at the forwarding business, it was ahead of where the brokerage business started, and it's now sitting at roughly 50-50. Asset-based carriers still drive the market. They still set where pricing is going, but I do think that you'll see brokers continuing to take share, and there's a couple of reasons for that.
You know, whenever I started in the industry, brokers did some of what I've talked about at the beginning. It was typically whenever an asset-based carrier was falling off a load, they were rejecting a tender, that brokers were coming in there, and they were picking it up. Now, if you're a customer, you can look at it and say, "Hey, I've got access to over 100,000 carriers." You know, the average fleet, I think like 90-something% of the overall for-hire trucking carriers have less than six trucks. You know, so if you think of large enterprise customers, which is what our business was built on, they're not signing up a six-truck carrier.
But what they will allow is for somebody like an RXO to be an aggregator of capacity for them, to be able to go on their platform, to be able to say, "Hey, we have this carrier that hauls with us X amount of times per month. We know their service. We know the relationship." So when you think about that, we're able to flex capacity up and down more than what an asset-based carrier can do in any given market.
Great, thanks for that answer. And I'll throw some, maybe some recent stats on you in terms of where you're seeing some growth, but in the 2Q, 45% growth in LTL volumes, 17% growth in stops on the final mile side. You know, even at the bottom of the cycle, you're seeing growth in these two segments here. You know, how are you maybe leveraging the Coyote side to drive continued kind of growth into those segments, and where do you see yourself going in these two growth segments?
Sure. So let's break that down first between LTL and then last mile. So, last quarter, we grew LTL volume within our brokerage business by 45% year over year. We talked about earlier this year that we onboarded several large customers on the LTL business, and that ramped throughout Q1, so Q2 had the full quarter impact of that growth. But if you think about it holistically, LTL, you know, for us, really started four to five years ago in terms of where we are in growing that business. That was, you know, low single-digit % of our volume, legacy RXO, four or five years ago. And at the time of the acquisition of Coyote, it was about 20%. So that business has experienced tremendous growth.
Legacy Coyote also had an LTL business, which is also about 20% of their volume, and that business is now 32% of our truckload volume. So you think of our brokerage volume. So you think about, you know, that massive growth that we've had. I think it's also important to break down the differences between Legacy RXO and Legacy Coyote LTL, where Legacy RXO was built on large enterprise-type customers, in many cases where we've been servicing that truckload freight very well, and they come to us because LTL has been a pain point for them. So how do we go ahead and leverage our larger scale on behalf of our customers? And they then go ahead and outsource LTL to us. So that's been a big growth driver for us.
And on the Coyote side, it's been more transactional and maybe a bit more SMB oriented. So really nice combination in terms of diversity associated with the two different LTL businesses. Longer term, we said this on our earnings call last month. We think LTL has the ability to get to, you know, 50% plus of our mix, and that business has very strong gross margins, higher than the truckload gross margin percentage. Lower gross profit per load, but higher gross margin percentage, and it's much more stable. We talk about every earnings call, you know. We show that slide on historical LTL gross profit per load, and it's very stable.
I think adding that as part of our growth pillar as it relates to just incremental pillars of volume that have more stable EBITDA. That's certainly part of our strategy. And then you think about the last mile side. Last mile now, it's four consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Stop growth was up 17% year over year, and what are we doing? We're seeing continued share gains with our existing customers. We're onboarding new customers, and in some cases, we've also had Legacy Coyote customers onboard into our last mile business. So, that growth will decelerate into the back half of the year, as we've talked about, because we are benefiting from some of those onboardings that occurred last year.
But you think about how weak the big and bulky market has been for the last three, four years. We are significantly outpacing the growth in that market, and the team continues to execute incredibly well within last mile.
Got it. You know, one of the things that we talk about in the brokerage space a lot is, you know, we've touched on this tech angle. You know, how do you maintain a differentiation at RXO, you know, when all these competitors are trying to go after the same, you know, tech angle? What moats do you think is specific to RXO, you know, versus kinda some other competitors?
I, I would start by saying, like, when you look at anything that is customer-facing, anything that is carrier-facing, anything that is for our employees, that's homegrown, and so that is unique to RXO. You know, Jared talked about employee productivity being up, you know, over 45% on a two-year stack, over 18% just from the prior year. You know, we're seeing the benefits of what we've been building for the last decade. You know, for us, we think about it very simply as we build tech: Is this something that is gonna help us gain market share? Is this going to something that is gonna help us operate at how well we buy versus market, so impacting our gross profit per load during any given cycle? What does this do to our employee productivity over the long term when we're building it?
Now, you know, there's been a lot out there on AI, not just in the transportation industry, but in all industries. And I think, you know, when you look at it for us, you probably won't see us put out as many press releases as what some in our industry, as well as some outside of our industry, are doing, because it is a secret sauce for us of what we've been building on the customer, the carrier, and the employee side, and we think over the long term, it's what will allow us to outperform. If you look prior to the AI becoming, you know, the hot topic of what was going on, we were doing machine learning pricing algorithms before most were talking about it.
I think for us, technology, as I said at the beginning, has always been in the foundation of what we're doing, and we're partnering it with great operators. And so when you're building technology with the people who know how to do the code, they know how to build the technology, and you're partnering with people who understand the transportation industry, it does become a differentiator for the product that you ultimately build.
Great, thank you. We're about ten minutes left. I wanted to open it up to the floor, maybe if there are any questions from the audience. If not, I can kinda keep running through some questions I've got.
Second is why LTL has grown. Just maybe spend another minute on why LTL has grown so quickly for you. You said that you're solving pain points for customers, but there's plenty of excess capacity from the asset-based LTL carrier, so what is the pain point that you're solving for them?
I think first, don't think about us as taking share from asset-based carriers, right? Like, it is more redistributing that freight out to other asset-based carriers. We view ourselves as a sales channel for a lot of these LTL carriers and what they're doing. You know, 'cause again, like, we're an asset-light company, so it has to end up back on the truck. For us, it's about making sure that for the customer, we're putting it with the right truck, with the right carrier for the lane. When you look at our share gains, it starts with our existing customers, as Jared mentioned earlier. If you think of our existing customers, these are people that we have 10-, 15-year relationships with, and they've been doing truckload business. That's how we built the business.
They know our technology platform, to your point, or earlier. Like, they've seen it. They know what it can do for them. So when they know, "Hey, we're comfortable with the platform, we're comfortable with the people," and then I start to think about LTL, and I think about claims, lost shipments, damages. I'm on three or four platforms from different national providers. I can get on one platform. I can still work with, you know, three, four, five national providers, plus I'm going to get to work with some of the regionals to make sure I'm getting the right truck on the right load. It becomes less of a pain point for the customer, because for these customers, LTL, a lot of times, in terms of revenue, makes up, like, low to mid-single digits % of the overall freight under management that they're putting out there.
But in terms of time, it takes a lot more time whenever you think about the things I mentioned earlier, of claims, lost shipments, and damages. So for us, the LTL growth, I think, will be lumpy at times, because you're onboarding large customers, and so, like, you've seen that grow, growing 40%. We've talked about it's gonna be another strong quarter for us again in LTL growth this quarter. But these are large customers who are coming on, and you don't actually know the timing of how they all hit at the same time. But we think, you know, over the long term, you know, whenever I look at some companies that have built LTL out, and they had a head start on us, C.H. Robinson, I think over 50% of their volume is LTL.
Echo is a company that was public at one point. I think, like, 60%-70% of their overall volume is on LTL, and that creates, for us, stability and gross profit per load. In the truckload gross profit per load, it moves a lot with what's going on in the market, but if you look at our earnings deck, there's a chart that shows you gross profit per load on LTL, and, like, you see a little bit of movement, but it's not like the truckload that's moving up and down, like the peaks and the valleys. It's very, very stable as far as what happens on the LTL.
Great. Maybe a quick follow-up on that. Just given the consolidated nature of LTL, is there an argument for LTL brokerage to also be more consolidated? Just because, you know, the relationships that you're driving is kind of on a smaller base.
I think it's two things. I think, yes, there's. Not just in LTL, but I think in brokerage in general, there's opportunity for consolidation in the market, and I think that you'll continue to see consolidation in the market. I think right now, the top, after the Coyote acquisition, it was top 10, so now it's top nine brokers make up around 50% of the overall brokerage market. I think that you'll see that consolidate, the top three or four owning 60%, 70% of the market over the next several years. And you, when you look at it, technology, being able to service customers at scale, that happens at the top with these large customers.
So I don't think it's something specific to LTL. I think it's something specific to brokerage, and if you think about other modes like refrigerated, flatbed, cross-border, hazmat, there's a lot of opportunity out there. The other place that you see opportunity for consolidation, where there's not as many players out there, but is on the managed transportation side, which, again, would be on the truckload and the LTL side.
Got it. Maybe, Drew, talking about the flatbed and the hazmat side, you know, are there verticals maybe that RXO, as a brokerage provider, doesn't play in today? How do you think about growing into those future verticals, and how does M&A fit into the long-term strategic framework at RXO?
Yeah. So we built the business off of 53-foot dry vans. You know, one or two swing doors, you know, is what it was built off of. If you look at refrigerated, flatbed, cross-border, hazmat, LTL, these are all strategic initiatives for us that we will and are growing organically. If there's something out there that makes sense on the M&A side, we would absolutely take a look at it. I think, you know, you look at Coyote, it's the largest transaction. I'm fairly certain I'm right on this. It's the largest transaction from one asset-light company to another asset-light company, and, you know, for us, like, M&A is part of our capital allocation strategy, but it has to be the right M&A. It has to be a strategic fit. It has to be a cultural fit.
So the bar for M&A is very, very high, and it's got to be something that is gonna create shareholder value over the long term.
Got it. Jared, you kind of mentioned this with some of the cost takeouts and the productivity gains, but maybe double-clicking that on a different angle, you know, looking at the cash flow perspective. Even without a cycle turn, what are some of the cash flow dynamics that we should all make sure we're aware of, you know, kind of going into the second half in 2026?
Yeah, so when you think about free cash flow, Q2 was one of our strongest quarters that we've had since spin, putting up a 58% adjusted free cash flow conversion from EBITDA, and we signaled that Q3 would be another strong adjusted free cash flow quarter. We did benefit from, you know, some harmonizing of working capital as it relate to the Coyote acquisition, but I think the longer-term view on this, and I think this goes to the root of your question, is, you know, the free cash flow profile of this business longer term is incredibly strong. You think about, you know, the characteristics of this business, right? Think about our fixed costs in terms of cash outflows. We've got about, you know...
Next year, we talked about $50 million of CapEx, which will come down by about $20 million year over year from $70 million this year. And then you think about interest expense, roughly, call it, $30 million. Anything above, call it, that $80 million threshold, right, from an adjusted EBITDA basis, on a normalized year, obviously, this year we still have some restructuring and, integration charges related to Coyote, but we'll hit the, balance sheet at, you know, call it, $0.75 on the dollar, just adjusted for our long-term effective tax rate of 25%.
So you think about, you know, You know, you think about, on a normalized basis, what the adjusted EBITDA profile of this company looks like, call it, you know, mid, you know, 5-6% type adjusted EBITDA margins, and you think about that $80 million of fixed outflow between CapEx and interest, right? All of that will drop to the bottom line in terms of on the balance sheet with re- at 75 cents on the dollar. So you think about the cumulative free cash flow generation of this business and the capabilities that we have, further enhanced by all the cost takeouts that you mentioned that we talked about, you know, that's what gets us excited about thinking about that cross-cycle earnings power and the associated free cash flow generation of the business.
Got it. Maybe last question from me. Drew, you're a public company CEO, you've got to make the quarters. How do you balance between, you know, maybe short-term profit protect, protection, and in doubling down on the bottom of the cycle, investing in growth, and being ready for, you know, and for your customers in the upcycle? You've been through a couple different cycles. You know, what strategies do you think, you know, really work here at the bottom of the cycle?
I think if you're running the company effectively, especially in times like what we're in right now, you wanna run the company wherein you're in a continual state of mindset improvement, and looking at ways to operate the company. I said this in the opening, and I laugh when I said it, but I was serious: it's times like these that help you build a stronger base and a stronger foundation as a company. So for us, like, you know, I was serious, like, spinning off at the bottom of the cycle is a great opportunity for us to create the foundation for who RXO is, and prepare ourselves for the upcycle. With all of that said, you know, while we have to report out quarterly, that's not how we look at the business.
We look at the business of what it's going to do over the next three, four, five years, what it's going to do through a cycle. You know, I'm probably alone in this, but I'm not a CEO who looks at our stock price on a daily basis. You know, Jared calls me if it goes up or down too much, but you know, for the most part, you know, I mean, like, I learned from Brad Jacobs a year ago-years ago, the only time that the stock price matters is when you buy and when you sell, and I'm not selling any stock right now.
Great. That was a great answer. You have a couple minutes left here. I wanted to maybe open it up for any last-minute questions from the audience, but other than that, we can kind of wrap up here. Got one more.
Sorry, I won't be bashful, but the 97% number in terms of sort of digital order entry, what is that number through the cycle? In other words, what % of brokered freight that you're touching is fully natively digital? No phone calls-
Right.
No bill of lading paperwork, et cetera.
So, I wanna be clear, the 97% was created or covered, and that was at Legacy RXO, so created is on the customer side, covered is on the carrier side. We haven't put out something that said, "created and covered," but what we talked about at Legacy RXO is, we were much farther ahead on the customer side than what we were on the carrier side, so if you think about the customer side, it was very easy to automate with large enterprise customers and getting them onto the technology platform. With smaller carriers, and you're talking about some drivers that are owner-operators, that are still operating off of their flip phone, it's a little bit more difficult to get them to come in at the same rate.
But with that said, Coyote was actually ahead of RXO on the carrier side of how they were operating, 'cause they were working with larger carriers and private fleets. So I expect that 97% number came down a little bit. I don't have the number right in front of me, but it came down a little bit post-Coyote acquisition of created and covered. But I think longer term, you know, the goal would be to look at how do we have created and covered in the 60%-70% range?
Yeah. Can you maybe give an example of how AI is increasingly helping your customers, maybe more specifically in the last, like, few months, something that's transitioning or something that's kicking in that you're providing for a customer that's accretive to you and accretive to your customer?
Yeah. I'll give you two examples. I'll start on the last mile side of the business. Whenever you're thinking about going into somebody's home and scheduling delivery appointments and keeping them updated throughout the day, you're talking about people who, a lot of times, if they're having a washer or dryer or refrigerator delivered to their home, they've taken off of work. So, like, making sure that we're doing what we're saying we're doing, the scheduling, the routing, all of that is being done on the AI side. On the brokerage side, an example that I'd give you is, you know, whenever I started, and I started at the desk level, talking to carriers and customers. As I became more efficient at my job and I became better, I got an assistant.
Now, that assistant is actually a robot, and so, like, to be able to go in there and how we're tracking and tracing loads, what we're doing on the call center side, what we're doing from the pricing side, all of that is running through AI now for us.
Can you talk a little bit about moving into markets like hazardous, hazmat, for example? How is that in an asset-light model any different? Is it just driving the channel, the carrier awareness, sales process, and software updates? Like, what makes that a difficult transition?
It's not a difficult transition. I think it's more of a focus for us. Like, you know, the easiest way to scale up, you know, when we were at XPO, was through dry van freight, and, like, you could go into large enterprise customers, and we were able to build a base. So I think it's more of the shift in focus than it is on anything. And not a shift in focus, 'cause we're still focused on the truckload side, but it's more of, "Hey, we have these capabilities. We have the capacity. We have carriers who have hazmat authorities." And so it's making sure that you're lining up the right capacity for the customer whenever you're going out there. But it's not something that is, you need technological advances to be able to do.
It's something we could have done in the beginning, but we wanted to be able to build the base and the foundation first. It's also higher gross profit per load, as I'm sure you could imagine. Much higher.
Great. Well, thank you so much, everybody.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.