J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the J.B. Hunt's second quarter 2020 earnings call. All lines are currently in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at any time, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. To remove yourself from queue, press the pound key. A replay will be made available after today's call on the company's website at jbhunt.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand the call over to Brad Delco, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Hopefully everyone has had an opportunity to review our earnings release that was issued earlier this afternoon. If not, you should be able to access the release on the investor section of our website at jbhunt.com. Before I introduce the speakers on today's call, I'd like to take some time to provide some disclosures regarding forward-looking statements. This call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, anticipates, intends, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on J.B. Hunt's current plans and expectations and involve risk and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. For more information regarding risk factors, please refer to J.B. Hunt's annual report on Form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I'd like to introduce the speakers on today's call. This afternoon, I am joined by our CEO, John Roberts, our interim CFO, Chief Accounting Officer, Controller, and Senior Vice President of Finance, John Kulow, Shelly Simpson, our Chief Commercial Officer and President of Highway Services, Darren Field, our President of Intermodal, and Nick Hobbs, President of Dedicated and Final Mile Services. At this time, I'd like to turn the call to our CEO, Mr. John Roberts, for some opening comments. John?

Thanks, Brad. The second quarter has confirmed the comprehensive nature of the virus throughout the period. As noted, we immediately committed ourselves to the priorities of taking care of our people and delivering on the promises we have made to our customers. We are encouraged with our results in both areas through the second quarter. More than 75% of our employee base has been unable to work from home due to the nature of our business and the ongoing needs of our customers. The safety practices and PPE supplies we deployed early and have continued to support and provide have proven substantially effective to date. We review both external and internal COVID-related data daily. We will continue to monitor the situation and maintain focus on these important priorities. Additional facility investments have been and are being made to all work areas in Lowell and across the country to help lower risk. Equally rewarding has been the recognition and encouragement from so many of our customers in acknowledging the performance of our people, particularly our drivers, for providing consistent service and availability, moving Frank to where it is needed. We stand ready and able to continue to serve them and their ultimate customers. Another important discussion that has developed during the second quarter is about inclusion and diversity. While this is not a new topic here at J.B. Hunt, the level and quality of dialogue has elevated in recent weeks. I can report that the entire executive leadership team is actively engaged in understanding where we are and determining where we want to go in improving these vital elements through all levels of the company. I will again recognize and thank the amazing employees of J.B. Hunt for their remarkable efforts to stay together, strong, safe, and reliable over the past quarter. There is no quit in our people. Our field operators, drivers, maintenance technicians, along with our support teams in the field and in Lowell, have remained vigilant and true to our mission. We are extremely proud of the entire organization. John Kulo will comment on our current financial situation, and as an enhancement to this call, our segment leaders will address the performance and trends in each of the business units. I will focus my remarks on the macro view we have today across the top of the businesses, Clearly, we are off our original plans in many respects, and comparisons to last year do not help illuminate much about where we find ourselves. What we do know is that during the quarter, we saw a stable and steady cadence of demand, particularly in our dedicated and intermodal businesses, and even see some of the disruption in our highway services, brokerage, and truckload signaling a similar upward slant to the demand curve, albeit difficult on near-term margins. Final mile business lines are slowly but surely working their way back online. Finally, our need to hire more drivers as an indication of what we hope is a bottom in the cycle. This is particularly encouraging in that we have experienced some of the lowest driver turnover ever in the past four months. While still too early to call, at least we have some potential signs of inflection in the demand curve. We will look for more direction from import data, inventory levels, and retail sales information. as well as thoughtful input from our customers to build confidence in the trends into the second half of the year. Until that confidence firms, we maintain our current state of cost control efforts, a conservative capital expenditure approach, and contained payroll and hiring practices. We have restarted some strategic discussions around growth channel prospects, particularly in areas where we anticipate potential demand-driven, rate-supported needs to expand fleet sizes. implementing new dedicated and final mile contracts as sales come back online, and positioning for new investments in technology, all in early stage preparation for what we hope is the inevitable return to normalcy. Having said all that, we are cautious. Recent COVID case count expansion and the uncertainty of what that may present will drive us to hold back from now on any directional changes from the current state of conservative thinking. And again, we will maintain the priorities of keeping our people safe, and striving to honor the commitments we have made to our customers going forward. With that, let me turn it over to John Kulow for his thoughts. John.