Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Old Dominion Freight Line third quarter 2023 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, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the third quarter 2023 conference call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through November 1st, 2023 by dialing 1- 877-344-7529, access code 8344351. 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, 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 do ask, in fairness to all, that you please limit yourselves to just one question at a time before returning to the queue. Thank you 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. Marty Freeman. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter conference call. With me today on the call is Adam Satterfield, our CFO. After some brief remarks, we will be glad to take your questions. Old Dominion's third quarter financial results reflect continued softness in the domestic economy. As a result, our shipment levels decreased on a year-over-year basis for the fifth straight quarter. Some encouraging trends developed during the quarter. as our LTL shipments per day averaged 49,670 after averaging 47,077 per day for the first six months of the year. While a portion of this growth can be attributed to the loss of one large competitor, we believe we are winning new business from other carriers in the industry due to the quality of our service and overall value provided to our customers. The OD team effectively responded to this positive inflection in volumes by continuing to offer superior service at a fair price. We were pleased that our on-time performance was 99% during the quarter, while our cargo claims ratio was 0.1%. As we have said many times before, service means much more than just picking up and delivering to our customers freight on time and claims free. There are many other attributes that shippers consider when selecting a carrier, such as consistent transit times, carrier trustworthiness, and ease of doing business. Mastio and Company conducts a comprehensive LTL study each year, and they recently measured carriers on 28 different service and value-related attributes. Mastio published their 2023 results just this week, and we are extremely proud to be named the number one national LTL provider for the 14th straight year. Logistic professionals ranked OD as number one for 25 of the 28 individual attributes in the most recent survey, which was our best performance ever and demonstrates our unwavering commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction. We believe the consistency and quality of our service over many years as validated by Mastio, has differentiated Old Dominion in the marketplace and supported our ability to win market share over the long term. Our superior service also continues to support our ongoing yield management initiatives. We focus on obtaining consistent yield increases each year to offset our cost inflation and support our ongoing investments in capacity and technology. Maintaining excess capacity during slower economic environments comes at a cost. But we believe having an available capacity for customers when they need it the most is a critical element for our value proposition. As a result, we consistently invest in service center capacity, equipment, technology, and most importantly, our people. Because of these investments, we are well positioned to respond to the positive inflection in volumes during the quarter. It is important to note that while other carriers may have the ability to invest in service centers, equipment, and technology, family of employees that truly distinguishes us from our competition. We have a unique company culture that has defined who we are for many years. Delivering superior service at a fair price, having a consistent approach to pricing and investing for growth may sound like a simple formula, but it takes a committed team to keep delivering on these fundamental elements for a long-term strategic plan. The execution by our team and consistency in our long-term financial results gives us a continued confidence in our strategic plan. We remain committed to this plan and believe we are better positioned than any other carrier in our industry to win market share over the long term. As we continue to deliver our unmatched value proposition to our customers over the long term, we are confident that we can create further profitable growth and increase shareholder value. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, and now Adam will discuss our third quarter financial results in greater detail.