J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the J.B. Hunt Transport second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andrew Hall, Senior Director of Finance. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Before I introduce the speakers, I would like 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 used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on J.B. Hunt's current plans and expectations. Thank you for joining us today. Our COO and President of Highway Services and Final Mile, Nick Hobbs, Brad Hicks, President of Dedicated Contract Services, and Darren Field, President of Intermote. I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Ms. Shelley Simpson, for some opening comments. Shelley?

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon. I want to start by thanking our employees across the organization for their hard work and relentless focus on serving our customers safely. We continue to operate in a dynamic environment that requires us, To be nimble, make decisions quickly, and adapt as conditions change. Time and again, our people have demonstrated their ability to do exactly that while remaining operationally excellent. As we move through the year, we remain focused on executing against the priorities we outlined at the beginning of 2026. First and foremost, that means driving discipline growth through operational excellence. Customer conversations around pricing continue to evolve alongside a market that is changing rapidly. We are pushing where we can and where we need to. Second, we are leveraging the investments we've made in our people, technology, and capacity to create sustainable, competitive advantages. While the market environment has improved, our focus on cost control has not changed. We remain committed to removing structural costs from the business and improving the way we operate. That discipline is a critical component of our long-term strategy and positions us to perform well across market cycles. Third, we are focused on repairing margins and generating long-term shareholder returns. We have made meaningful progress repairing margins and while further opportunity remains, we are encouraged by the trajectory of the business. We continue to have transparent conversations with customers about the investments required to maintain this service capacity and innovation that supports their growth while producing appropriate returns for our shareholders. It is increasingly clear that the freight market has changed. Capacity has tightened across the industry as safety-focused enforcement and broader supply pressures continue to affect available truckload capacity. We saw that tightening build throughout the quarter, including a noticeable step change around the annual road check event in early May that has persisted. While demand is improving gradually, the current market tightness is being driven primarily by supply conditions. We didn't spend the last four years waiting for the cycle to turn. We spent the last four years preparing for it. In this environment, I am confident in our strategy that has enabled us to gain market share, the foundation we built over our history, our commitment to people, technology, and capacity, being a leader in safety performance, Consistent operational excellence and delivering value to our customers through our CBD process has positioned us to succeed today and to deliver even stronger results in the future. We have structurally lowered our cost to serve customers, creating additional growth opportunities while driving progress towards our margin goals, even without a material benefit from pricing. The financial leverage in our business model continues to improve through disciplined growth and the application of technology across the enterprise. All of this positions our company to compound growth through cycles. Looking ahead, I'm excited about the opportunities in front of us during the second half of the year. We expect demand for our services to remain strong and remain closely aligned with our customers on their capacity needs. We have proven that our model works and that our service delivers value. We remain focused on ensuring that we receive the appropriate return for the value we provide while continuing to create disciplined, sustainable growth and long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brad.