Dave Jackson
Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets. Your line is open
Yes, I think it's going to take work but we're in an environment where we just - we have to be more efficient, just to be prepared for whatever is out there, whatever maybe coming. So that's where we're at, that's arguably what we do best and so from a cost perspective and to be very, very efficient, when you're in kind of a glowing growth mode, and customers have very serious needs, you do what it takes to be able to go do that for you or for them and that's not always the most efficient way. So we are aggressively attacking cost a bit, we're better off for that and based on my last answer I kind of talked about cost per mile and just our belief Tom is that given the intense competitiveness of this industry, that if we can have the lowest operating cost, the most efficient operation, and that also includes the lowest transactional cost on the brokerage side because we don't measure that obviously in a per mile cost. Then that sets us up to be fairly resilient in up and down maracas, and more importantly, sets us up to be a long term grower, and maybe even consolidate or sort through acquisitions and leveraging some of the efficiency. So, that's kind of how we think from an inflationary perspective, trucker wages has been the most inflationary, we're laughing some very healthy increases so they are not as inflationary, they won't, they don't expect driver wages to be quite as inflationary in the back half of the year given what a lot of what we've already done, used our new equipment is inflationary, but we're seeing improvements in fuel economy that are helping to offset some of that. And so I'd feel like we have a solid handle on the inflationary side, now if we were to see a small interest rate hike happen here in the back half of the year, it would have a nominal effect on us from - because of our debt position, probably it becomes a bigger challenge for those that are little more debt laden in our space, probably not the first quarter point of course, but then all the other good things that come with that from a staller perspective, probably further pressure, commodities, I think as we've already seen which is a good thing for us because our second biggest cost is fuel and it's down meaningfully. So I'm not as scared about inflation, back half of this year as maybe we have been in other years.