Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Old Dominion Freight Line Incorporated third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in 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 your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Drew Anderson. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning, and welcome to the third quarter 2021 conference call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through November 3, 2021 by dialing 877-344-7529. Access code 101-60197. The replay of the webcast may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding Old Dominion's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors among others that are set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. and in this morning's news release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. As a final note before we begin, we welcome your questions today, but we ask, in fairness to all, that you limit yourselves to just a couple of questions at a time before returning to the queue. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference over to the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Greg Gant. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter conference call. With me on the call today is Adam Satterfield, our CFO. After some brief remarks, we'll be glad to take your questions. During the third quarter, the Old Dominion team produced strong, profitable growth that included new company records for quarterly revenue and profitability. The third quarter of 2021 was our third straight quarter with double-digit revenue growth and the fifth straight quarter of double-digit growth in earnings per diluted share. While our revenue results reflect the unprecedented demand for our best-in-class service, our ability to grow at these impressive rates is the result of our long-term commitment to consistently invest in capacity. We continue to have available network capacity as well as best-in-class service, both of which are qualities that differentiate us within our industry and provide a distinct competitive advantage for Old Dominion. These qualities have also supported our ability to win market share and produce profitable growth over the long term. With continuing strength in the macroeconomic environment and limited industry capacity, we believe demand for transportation services will continue through the fourth quarter of this year and into 2022. As a result, we expect that our business-level momentum that began in the third quarter of 2020 will also continue. To take advantage of these opportunities and produce further profitable growth, we believe that it will be important for us to continue to execute on the long-term strategic plan that we have operated under for many years. This strategy focuses on delivering a value proposition of superior service at a fair price to our customers which generally creates the capital for us to further invest in the capacity and technology to support our customers' supply chain needs. Our most important investment, however, will continue to be in the OD family of employees. Our people are critical to our success as they work tirelessly each day to provide service value to our customers. We added over $1,000 new full-time employees between June and September of this year. These additions resulted in a 20.9% increase in our average full-time headcount as compared to the third quarter of 2020. While we have grown the OD family this year, the capacity of our people continues to be our biggest need to support future growth. As a result, we expect that we will continue to add new full-time employees to our team during the fourth quarter and next year. We believe further additions will be necessary to prepare for anticipated growth and to also reduce the use of third-party purchase transportation. We expect to use third-party purchase transportation during the fourth quarter at levels similar to the third quarter. While we would like to reduce this level of utilization we must continue to supplement the capacity of our people and our fleet in support of our top-line revenue performance. We hold the third parties that we work with to the same standards of excellence, and our team remains fully committed to providing best-in-class service to our customers. Our customers' expectations for excellence do not change regardless of how we move their freight, and given the supply chain challenges that many of them are currently facing, We want them to have complete confidence in our ability to deliver. Old Dominion sets the standard in our industry with our ability to provide superior service and service center capacity to support our customers' growth. As a result, we believe we are in a better position than any other carrier to win additional market share and further increase shareholder value over the long term. Thank you for joining us this morning. And now Adam will discuss our third quarter financial results in greater detail.