Great. Next up we have Werner Enterprises, and very happy to have with us President and CFO, Chris Wikoff, President, Nathan Meisgeier, and SVP of Pricing and Planning. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us.
Sure.
Obviously, the cycle has taken precedence in topic before. Maybe start off by giving us how has progressed? Where are we right now, and what kind of?
Overall, our view market. Overall market.
Yep.
Fundamentals are strong. Better balance helpful. A number of different metrics. I know there's been a focus over-indexing on more recent spot rates being a little bit softer.
Yep.
Debate on, is that seasonal or is that sub-seasonal? It's a data point, but when we're talking about rate, we're really talking about overall blended rate, contractual rates that continue to be high single digits, low double digits in terms of contract renewals.
All of that is positive. It's more supply-driven. We think that's going to continue. Enforcement's been multi-pronged. It's also maturing. Not to deep dive into that right now, but while it's supply-driven, the freight flows continue to be a positive, steady. We're seeing higher bid volume and some record highs on bid volume in dedicated. Some continued elevated mini bids in one-way, as I think shippers are transitioning from spot and evaluating the market, and transitioning more to contract, and some of that in-between space. Overall, I think it's positive. Not much to point to in terms of demand outside some of the tech-
Yep
and data center build-out, but overall, I think the fundamentals are strong despite the fact that it's more supply-driven.
Got it. That is great to hear. Maybe to unpack that a little bit, our next question was about the seasonality, what we saw in the late summer, kind of that lull, if you will, in some of the data. Again, do you think that's largely seasonal, or do you think there's something else going on?
I think some of it's seasonal.
Okay.
As I said, I think there's going to be ebbs and flows to spot.
Sure.
As in a tighter market, shippers who have had a slice of their supply chain that's been more geared towards spot, they're evaluating that and other options, which can be moving into contract. There's going to be some ebbs and flows to spot. I think it's one metric. The tender rejects continue to be elevated. That too may have had some softness relative to some other months, but overall, it's still 3X what it was a year ago in terms of tender rejects. I wouldn't over-index on spot.
Got it. From my seat, I think the fact that contract rates have held up or even gone up in that period that spot has come off a little bit of its highs is an indication that this probably is seasonality and a sign that that kind of trend is positive. Do you think that's fair? It sounds like you're seeing that as well through-
Yes
Yeah, Ravi, I think that's fair. I think it's also important to note specifically as it relates to Werner with our exposure to retail.
Yep.
A lot of discount value retail. We also have a good amount of exposure to food and bev.
And so those volumes for us have been relatively stable. These are replenishment items. These are consumables that are shipping on a daily, weekly business or basis.
Yep.
And so, from our perspective at least, it's felt steady and stable from all the way through the second quarter here into the third in terms of our volumes.
Got it. You say demand hasn't really picked up just yet. Maybe just a few questions on that. Starting with, again, seasonality and peak season, what kind of visibility do you have on peak season already so far? Do you think it can be a record peak season? How do you think we move from here?
Well, again, maybe starting back to rate, I think we've got more confidence in peak premiums, peak rate being better than the last several years. A bit early to be overly focused on peak volumes.
Some of those from shippers are still coming in terms of their outlook. Some of those we have in hand, but compliance could also be different. Although, I think there's other anecdotal points including imports, and a lot of different data out there reports on imports, but generally, it looks like imports are holding up. I think that's favorable in terms of what volumes could be relative to peak.
Got it. Just kind of looking at. It sounds like your ultimate target here is pushing rate, which is completely understandable. Remind us again when your 2027 bid season starts. I think that should be sometime in October. What is your expectation there, and do you think that rate kind of continues from what you saw in 2026? Do you think it's a step function improvement? Do you think it's the later half of bid season in the middle of 2027 that really picks up?
Yeah. I think your question's specifically more focused on one-way.
On one-way. Absolutely.
Yep.
Yeah.
We're talking about the one-way bid season. Just to maybe step back, give a little bit of perspective. In the second quarter, we reported 10% up one-way trucking rate per total mile. Combined with that was better utility, up 16%, and so revenue per truck per week almost up about 28% for us. The combination of those things were very good. As you mentioned, bid season pretty much winding down here for 2026.
Starting to think about 2027, we would expect those first handful of annual bids really in the next 30-60 days. Based on our base case, in terms of what's happening with the market, that's still going to be tight. Capacity attrition continues. We would think that the demand backdrop heading into peak would be strong, and as you start to negotiate some of those bids, it should be a very strong operating environment. Obviously, it's been that way all year long. After three or four years of one-way rates that have been flat to down, we're certainly in need of a couple of bid seasons to get this pricing to levels that are more reinvestable, more sustainable.
Our expectation, it is early enough for us that we are probably not going to throw out a roll, quantify the number right now, but there is no reason to think, heading into the coming year, that there would not be ongoing tightness in the market, which would lead to strong rate increases on one-way business heading into 2027, and that, of course, would flow back into dedicated as well.
Got it. Let us take a step back here and go back to how we got here, because you guys were one of the first to flag the supply side risks. I think Derek was one of the first people to quantify 10%-15% capacity exit as a result of the immigration regs, and then we have had Montgomery on top of that. So, classic sell side, what innings question, what innings are we in question. What innings are we in on the immigration stuff? What innings are we in on the Montgomery stuff, and ultimately, which one do you think has a bigger impact on rates?
Yeah, there is a lot there. So on the-
You get to choose
You call it the immigration stuff, so there's several parts to that, right?
Right.
There's English language proficiency,
Yep
which overlaps with non-domiciled CDLs, which probably has something to do with CDL mills, because I think most of those drivers that fit in the first two buckets probably went through a CDL mill.
Yep.
All of those things thrown into one bucket, I think the stats would say, so the feds, maybe seven months ago, sized it at 194,000 non-domiciled, non-compliant CDLs.
Against that number, we think we're at about 30,000 that are out now. Do the math there. That's only 15% of the way there. There has to be some overlap with that number in the ELP, and that ELP number is, I think, 28,000, 30,000 was the last we saw. Coincidentally, those two numbers are pretty similar. Then truck driving schools, 8,000 schools that have been closed as a result of enforcement actions. Interestingly, again, all these things are related because the feds have said that the schools that they targeted were schools where they saw trends from the first two out of service issues. If you weren't speaking English and you had 1,000 people that all went to the same school, they probably should go check out that school and see what's going on.
Yep.
Early innings on all three of those, I think, are still where we would say. Derek in, I think, the Q2 call, called it the third innings.
Even if we're another inning past, we're still in the first half of the game. Lots of sports metaphors here. We could switch to something else, I guess.
Sure.
The other part of it is the Montgomery side. That's a very, like Kip said, all of those first things were related. Montgomery feels unrelated for the most part because that's truckers and brokers who don't have good safety qualifications or good safety policies, and driving that capacity out of the market is a different thing. That decision was, help me out, May. Are we four months post Montgomery?
Yep.
It really feels, we have had that question a lot today in our one-on-ones, it feels like the dust is still just barely settling on Montgomery. People are trying to figure out where is the line on what is safe enough.
Yep.
The TIA, so Transportation Intermediaries Association, is trying to get the feds to give us a more granular analysis of that so that we can all bounce our policies against that. Really coming to the Werner side, we did not see a big blip coming out of Montgomery. We had already had good vetting practices on our brokerage side. We were confident in that we were using all of the available technology, all the available tools to us, to vet carriers. We have not seen shrinkage as a result of Montgomery.
We saw shrinkage in our fleet available to us on the third-party side prior to Montgomery as we were improving those carrier qualification standards. The market has to figure this out, then I will end on one quick note that you did not mention. Montgomery, a related case, is the Home Depot case out of Texas, which was also a Werner case, where the Texas Supreme Court told Home Depot, "You get dismissed from this lawsuit as a shipper because Werner is a safe choice." My words, maybe not the Texas Supreme Court's. A safe choice for shippers or for brokers to choose to give their freight to, and we had a cousin case of that on the other side of the state that was dismissed against a large shipper, a name brand that everyone would recognize. Our shippers have some protection.
Yep.
That happened very quickly after Montgomery. That gives them some comfort. I think other carriers and other brokers are going to have to find their own footing on that.
Got it. What do you think is the net result of Montgomery, and how long does it take? Do you think this just drives very small, marginal bad actors on the capacity side of the business? Do you think it drives an asset light to asset heavy shift? Do you think it sends pricing on the insurance side up for everyone? All of the above? What's the net implication?
Yeah. I'll try to do it in reverse order. Insurance pricing, you've probably heard, and we've certainly heard very different stories from folks that seem like they're similarly situated on that. Our insurance lift on that was negligible.
There were some that were saying publicly they saw it being a multiple of an increase on their insurance-
Yep
for brokerage. So that, I think, depends on where you were coming from on the front end.
As far as what's it doing to drive freight, I think it drives freight to larger or more sophisticated, which of course, those two things tend to go hand in hand.
Really, a shipper is looking for what's the buffer between me and the ultimate risk. If that buffer is greater sophistication and carrier qualification, great. If that buffer is you already have a reputation as a safe carrier, great. If that buffer is you have a larger tower of insurance, that's the buffer between me and the ultimate plaintiff who's looking for a deep pocket, great. If I'm a shipper, I don't care which one of those three benefits you're giving me. If you're giving me all of them, even better. So the larger and more sophisticated, brokers and asset carriers, I think, both benefit.
Got it. Last question on this topic. You guys have heavily invested in your driving schools over time. What kind of advantages does that give you now? Is that an area that you guys are looking to increase your investments as well?
Yeah. So, for those that don't know, we own Roadmaster Drivers School. It's 20 locations around the U.S. We tend to put those where we've got customers and freight because we can pump out graduates who presumably are domiciled near there and get them into a job that is a good fit for them to get them home into our dedicated fleets, usually more often, and get them home and keep them happy. So, we have seen a benefit from the feds closing other schools and increasing throughput to our schools, so we love that. We have the advantage, we think, of the ability to pick and choose and the better graduates from Roadmaster.
We can make sure that the quality comes to Werner. We are seeing some quality improvements on the front door, and that is allowing us to increase our throughput to Werner as far as graduates as well. We are proud of the fact that we allow the drivers from Roadmaster to choose where they want to go work. We hope that they would see Werner as an employer of choice, and we are confident in that.
Got it. All of this, obviously, the main impact or benefit would be on the one-way side. Switching to dedicated here for a second. Obviously, the majority of your business and where you guys made a big acquisition and are pushing deeper into, how much runoff benefit do you see from one-way to dedicated here? Is it relatively isolated because that was already a good, daily go home, everyday business to begin with? How much of a lift do you see?
Well, I think overall for the driver labor market, it continues to be tight.
Yep.
The Roadmaster positions us better. I think to your point, Ravi, dedicated, more dedicated jobs, and having a higher mix of dedicated, helps with that respect. There is a number of tools that we can use that position us well to work through a tighter driver market. We are seeing improvement this quarter relative to the second quarter. Alongside that, we can also do things in parallel to leveraging those tools of growing owner operator, as well as looking in dedicated at private fleet conversions, where presumably there is an incumbent pool of drivers. Obviously, they need to meet the Werner standard, but that can be an accelerated way to continue to grow and bring on quality drivers in a more accelerated fashion.
Got it. Are you seeing any structural shift from shippers who think that this is going to be a multi or multi-innings supply side issue, so I want out at an accelerated rate of my private fleet? Are you seeing any more incoming on the fleet conversion side?
Than you would normally do at this point in the cycle.
I'm sorry?
Than you would normally do at this point in the cycle.
I think so. There's a number of things going that I think are challenging for private fleets, whether it's the driver availability issue that we just discussed, whether it's much higher priced equipment now. Some of these fleets invested in more equipment back during the height of the COVID era. Those trucks are now 3-4 years old, getting to a replacement perspective. You got these emission regulations that are coming. All these things are, I think, challenging for private fleets, especially the smaller ones who maybe don't have the infrastructure, like a larger private fleet or like a for-hire fleet. As a result, and then of course, you got the insurance and the risk on top of all that.
I think all those things together are probably leading some folks to think about whether or not they want to continue to be in the private fleet business, or if they want to offload that and focus more on whatever the core part of their business is.
We have those opportunities that are right in our pipeline today that might be in different stages. It is a longer sales cycle-
when you're pursuing private fleets. All of that's in play right now.
Got it. On that point, I want to say the sky is the limit on one-way pricing because that seems a little extreme, but I think we do expect record spot rates, record contract rates, and you referenced that in your opening remarks as well. On the one-way side, is that the same kind of expectation on the dedicated side as well? Are you looking for pushing for more volume and pushing for more fleet conversion versus a pricing opportunity, or both, or what's the mix there of volume versus price?
Well, the tightness of the market certainly is already impacting Dedicated and will continue to. Sitting where Dedicated margins are, we don't need the amount of improvement, and it hasn't been under near the duress over the last four or five years that one-way has been under. As a result, we're going to continue to push increases. Our revenue per truck per week that we reported was 5% in the second quarter. Our guide for the full year is 3%-5%, and that's muted a little bit by the FirstFleet acquisition, where their revenue per truck per week number was a bit lower than ours. On a legacy basis, our number in the second quarter was close to 8%.
Yep.
That was driven partly by rate. Our contract renewals continue to go well. Our retention rates, both in the legacy dedicated fleet as well as in the FirstFleet, are very good in this environment. As you might imagine, we provide a very high level of service, a good stable financial carrier, so a good place for folks to move their dedicated in. All that's moving in the right direction, and we would certainly continue to expect that in the coming years, potentially. We think that there's good share gain in dedicated over time for a lot of the reasons we've already talked about. We're going to be there waiting for shippers to come, and we're going to be out in front of them, looking to continue to grow our share in dedicated.
Right now, that's about 75%-80% of TTS for us, and that's good stable margins. Margins we'd continue to improve to get us back over, kind of to that double-digit threshold.
Got it. Let's talk about FirstFleet, obviously, a significant acquisition for you guys a couple of quarters ago. How has that gone relative to your expectations, both in terms of integration, cost synergy, as well as potential revenue synergy opportunities?
Yeah. Excellent transaction. We're very pleased with it. It's a solid business at scale. Top 10 dedicated, pure dedicated player, over $600 million in annualized revenue. Excellent leadership team, focused on technology innovation, good driver retention, and durable end markets, food, beverage, specialized bakery. Everything that was very attractive to us. It fits well and complements our portfolio, the desire to continue to be durable, but still lean in and diversify in terms of end verticals and end markets. It's going well. Day one, immediately accretive, good durable margins, but a clear line of sight on how we can improve those margins, close the gap to our organic dedicated margins. The $18 million of synergies that we've talked about, which is basically a 300 basis point expansion to their margin, is well underway.
We've actioned about half of that with a line of sight on how to action the rest in 2027. It's going very well. Solid customer retention, driver retention, and overall integration very much on pace.
Got it. Obviously, the last lever here is logistics. We spoke about what Montgomery might mean for the asset-heavy business. What do you think that means for the asset-light business, in terms of taking a share from smaller players or potentially seeing customers moving to asset heavy? Kind of where does logistics end up net of some of those trends?
Yeah. At least with respect to Montgomery, I think it's overall positive. As we were talking about, it's hard to put our finger on right now something tangible in terms of how it's moving the needle specifically on capacity.
Sure.
But overall, I think it's constructive for those larger carriers, sophisticated carriers, both on the asset and the brokerage side, that have a safety focus, that are well-insured, and have sophisticated systems and processes in terms of carrier vetting. What I can tell you anecdotally is we have large customers on the brokerage side, they might also be doing business with us on the asset side, that are asking more questions about our vetting practices. Those are great conversations. We like those conversations. It really points to that customers are very much aware of the Montgomery ruling, the precedence that's been set of negligence anywhere in the decision-making process and supply chain can result in liability. Liability can follow that negligence.
So shippers are aware, and it's constructive that it's not just about price and on-time delivery, but there's also a broader focus on risk management as part of their equation as they're evaluating their supply chain.
Got it. So let's put all of that together. You guys obviously have very robust cycle dynamics on the one-way side. You have the FirstFleet acquisition on the dedicated side. You have opportunities in Montgomery on the logistics side. What does this mean for OR in 2026, and potentially through the cycle, maybe relative to previous up cycles?
Yeah. So just to talk about recent trends and trajectory, then we can talk about where we go from there. But in the first quarter, we were mid 2% on adjusted OI. Sorry, we were 1.5% consolidated. We are mid 2% in TTS.
We basically doubled both of those going Q1 to Q2.
Yep.
On a consolidated basis, we went from 1.5% to 3%. On TTS, we went from mid 2% to between 5% and 6% to end the second quarter. So from a TTS perspective, mid-cycle margins, we are still targeting low double digits. So we still have a gap to go. It is going to come through market help. It is going to also come through some self-help in terms of tech-enabled cost synergies, what we are doing intentionally around the portfolio, the FirstFleet synergies. But from a market perspective, what we are seeing in terms of rate, further demand for a dedicated model that will come with a higher contribution margin. And as equipment resale values on used equipment normalizes, all of that is, on a cumulative basis, very helpful and gives us confidence in mid-cycle achieving low double digits.
Between now and end of the year, for all of those reasons, we expect overall margins to continue to expand. Logistics had some margin pressure in the second quarter. We talked in our last earnings call about late July, we were already seeing that margin correction.
That's continued throughout this quarter, so that's helpful. Our second half guide, or I guess if you look at our full year guide on gains and just kind of do the math on the second half, it really points to gains being favorable second half versus the first half. All of that favorable
And should be accretive to margins. Fuel volatility is
Of course
is a distraction right now.
Yep
and a headwind in the quarter, just given the extreme pace that it's accelerating. Even with having fuel surcharges where we can largely pass that on, particularly in a portfolio that has more dedicated round-trip miles, where we don't have any empty mile exposure in this type of an accelerated pace of volatility, it's still difficult for those weekly resets to keep pace.
Got it. Let's just talk about that a little bit more because there is some concern about modal shift as well because of $6 diesel. Are you seeing any of that? Also, is there any way you guys can accelerate the surcharge mechanism, just given the magnitude of the inflation here?
Well, to the first part of your question, yes, we've really seen some acceleration and transition from truckload to intermodal. I think that started probably earlier in the year
Yep
just with the tightened market, with shippers looking for capacity. We started to see that. Then, was it March, April, we saw that first spike in fuel, so that kind of kickstarted it, and then here we are again with another increase in the fuel price. So, those things combined, I think, have moved that over from a truckload to an intermodal perspective. We have an intermodal division that's growing ourselves. That's a one-stop shop that we can provide that service in our brokerage division. Not as large as some of the other players out there, but a very quality product.
Mm-hmm. It is important to note, Ravi, that we are solution-oriented with large enterprise customers. So when they are trying to navigate fuel volatility or tariffs or other things, we have other offerings in our portfolio to where we can address how to solve problems in their supply chain.
Got it. I think that was a very comprehensive unpacking of what we see in the environment right now. I want to spend some time thinking of the long term as well, because autonomous trucking has been a topic that has really come up the investor interest curve for us this year. You guys are doing a lot of work there. So, maybe unpack for us what have you done so far when it comes to autonomous, what your current partnerships are, what have you found, what is working well, what still needs to improve?
Yeah. So, I would say we were early in this. We joke about how early on we were going to see autonomous companies wearing disguises because we did not want people to know that we were kicking the tires, so to speak, on the autonomous because of a fear of driver flight.
Sure.
There is a theory that the louder a carrier is about interest in autonomous, the more skittish your drivers get.
We've been loud with our driver fleet. We've got a driver town hall in Fontana tomorrow. I'll say this to them tomorrow, that even if the bull case of autonomous takes flight, that we will need more drivers next year and 10 years from now than we have right now.
Absolutely.
It's an additive to the portfolio story, and we've been saying that to drivers for years and years, and our drivers are now overall pretty comfortable with that. I can't speak for 10,000 drivers all at once, but pretty comfortable with that as the story. The strategy is, right now, we're partnering with several autonomous companies. We think we're with the leaders of the pack.
Right now, we're brokering freight to them. In the truck typically is a safety driver behind the wheel, not driving, an engineer in the jump seat for data purposes, and then the truck is driving itself for 99 or plus percent of the trip. That's the usual model right now. I sat through your fireside this morning with Chris Urmson from Aurora, and Chris talked about how the shift from TaaS to DaaS,
Yep
so Driver as a Service, is what our vision is, too.
That eventually we will get to fully driver out, and that will be the solution that we will start to use. The question is, at what scale? I know that is part of what is baked into your question. And how soon?
Yep.
There are a lot of unknowns there. The economics in your report, well, it is not your report. Who wrote it?
Nancy wrote the report.
Nancy wrote the report.
Yes, exactly.
You get credit for it, but Nancy has a great report.
My name's on top.
Yeah. Well, we know how that works. Nancy's great report is a great starting point for having the conversation about the economics. Werner, we believe that the economics are not that favorable to autonomous right now, and you and I had a conversation in the hall-
Okay
about some of those factors. But it is great to get something on paper to start talking about where do we have a disagreement, and by the way, if Aurora was in the room, we've had those conversations with Aurora directly as well. That's one piece is the economics, probably the biggest. The next piece is the insurance and claims side.
So there's some things that are crystal clear. If the software fails and causes an accident,
Yep
the autonomous companies across the board have said, "We'll take care of that." If Werner or the carrier did something to cause the accident, of course that's our problem.
There's a lot of gray between those two that we have to figure out before anybody would go to scale, or at least any publicly traded company would be able to go with this at scale. We're having those conversations with the AV companies. It's just not as maybe linear as it might sound.
Fair enough, yep.
If you think, "I could probably come up with every example of an accident," I'd love to sit down with somebody who thinks they can do that because we can come up with 1,000 more than what-
Sure. Mm-hmm
you can think of. We have to have some agreement in advance of where's the line.
Because the last thing that we need is a plaintiff's lawyer suing an AV company and Werner with two deep pockets sitting in front of them.
Sure
Werner and whoever, I will say Aurora, fighting over who is at fault.
Yep
Because that just drives up the verdict.
We need to get this stuff sorted out in advance. There are other components, I will give you the last one so we can move to another topic, but the infrastructure at the beginning point and the end point.
Again, you and I talked about this briefly.
Yeah
It's not that the truck has to go all the way to the destination, but it's got to get somewhere better than just to an exit ramp.
Sure.
Where's the infrastructure, the real estate infrastructure or the people infrastructure at the beginning and end point to unhook the truck from the trailer or hook it up or do a pre-trip or do a post-trip or any of the other things that have to happen, that has to get figured out, too. I'm not sure that cost, back to economics, I'm not sure that cost is baked in enough.
Got it.
It's something we're excited about, and I should have started here. The technology is the real deal. If anybody wants to say, "I can't believe that a truck can actually do all the things that these companies say it can do," the truck can do it. We're 100% bought in on that.
Got it. First of all, that was an incredibly thoughtful response, and clearly, you guys are in the weeds on this, so thank you for that. Maybe one follow-up here, as a sales sider, I think in very simplistic terms, let us assume that all of those friction points are friction points. Let us, for now, put them in the category of dotting I's and crossing T's. Let's say at some point, let's not figure out the timeframe, you figure all that out. What does this mean for your business three years, five years, 10 years from now?
Yeah. It would be a part of our growth strategy. It would not be to replace drivers that are currently on our fleet.
Yep.
It would be to grow the fleet with that as an additional component.
Yep.
It would be to improve drivers' experiences. So a driver who currently is on a long haul, that autonomous can do the long haul, and they can do a little bit of more what looks like dedicated or even dray work at the origin and destination, great. They get home more often. They get to see their kids' soccer games more often. That's a high-quality job close to their home. Great. Let's do that. It's really an "and" proposition.
In 3-5 years, we can see that having an impact. Now, an impact that is transformative to the business? Honestly, no.
But 3-5 years from now, we'll blink, and we'll be there.
Sure.
10 years ago, people were saying, "I don't believe that autonomous will ever get there.
Yep.
I just got done saying the technology is the real deal. It's going to be an exciting 3-5 years, and again, the safety case has been proven over and over again by the companies.
Got it. That's super helpful. Any questions from the audience? Nancy?
Nancy's going to want us to talk about her cool report again.
Yeah, we can move on from my report.
Okay.
I had a quick question on M&A. I know the FirstFleet integration is tracking well, even a bit ahead of plan. How has that changed your appetite for further M&A? Are there any segments that you're looking to augment? Any commentary around that would be great.
Good question. Obviously, we have enough to focus on with FirstFleet, Inc. optimizing value. It's going well, but we have more to do, so that has our attention. You also can't control when other quality opportunities are coming to market. I think more are coming to market. We've seen an elevated volume of just inbound inquiries, even if within 30 seconds, we determine that that's nothing that we're interested in. Still, the volume is up. We also know potential opportunities that might meet some criteria that could be coming to market or are held by private equity, and maybe beyond a normal hold period. There's pent-up demand, there's opportunities that will be coming to market as this market improves. We can't control that timing, and so we'll continue to balance that and evaluate those opportunities.
FirstFleet, Inc. is a great proof point for us of what checks the boxes, a strategic fit, a cultural fit, and one that we can continue to grow, revenue synergies, cost synergies. It meets the return thresholds that we had, and we feel like we achieved a very good value with it being accretive on day one and just more value to optimize from there. So where we can find additional opportunities like that, for sure, those could be opportunities we would be interested in, as well as other opportunities in asset light, where they've got technology, especially in a particular vertical, opportunities that complement what we're doing in Mexico, cross-border, dedicated final mile. We'll continue to be aware, engaged, and evaluate opportunities, but we're going to be disciplined and selective along the way.
Chris, really quick, let's talk about your actual fleet. CapEx needs, CapEx plans, growth versus replacement versus emissions reg. How are you thinking about that 2026 and 2027?
Real short answer, our CapEx is elevated in 2026. It is really coming more weighted here in the second half.
That is all aimed, for the most part, of reducing average age on tractors. That is helpful for the P&L. It is helpful for drivers. It is helpful for customers. Reinvesting in the business is a priority, and we will continue to prioritize that from a capital allocation perspective.
Sounds good. We are fresh out of time, so gentlemen, thank you so much. Obviously, fascinating time, both from a cycle perspective and from a long-term perspective, so excited to see what happens here.
Very good. Thanks for having us.