Recently several large trucking companies have announced huge profits due to hedging against fuel prices, which came down towards the last quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006 before racing back up in the middle of Q2 2206.
Large Profit takers were Swift Transportation, Knight Transportation, FedEx, UPS and many others.
Now with oil prices pushing upward and Hurricane Season coming and of course the looming Iran Nuclear Weapons Showdown of 2006 most in the transportation sector are not so optimistic.
In fact many have significantly raised rates to be assured they are not slaughtered in Q3 2006.
There were some carriers including Covenant Transportation with losses and some companies are now talking Mergers.
In fact the CEO of UPS has said the company may consider an extremely large acquisition.
This makes a lot of sense, but who might that be? Would it be Yellow/Roadway, a Rail Road, Covenant or some other Cargo Container Company? When UPS says; "extremely large" they would mean Big as in enormous.
So who are the players and will UPS indeed kick off a huge string of mergers once again in the Transportation Sector like FedEx did a few years ago with their move into FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight? Consider all this in 2006.