Saia, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q3 2023 SAIA Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Doug Cole, Executive Vice President and CFO. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to SIA's third quarter 2023 conference call. With me for today's call is SIA's President and Chief Executive Officer Fritz Holzgreif. Before we begin, you should know that during this call, we may make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements and all other statements that might be made on this call that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and the actual results may differ materially. We refer you to our press release and our SEC filings for more information on the exact risk factors that could cause actual results to differ. I'll now turn the call over to Fritz for some opening comments.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss SIA's third quarter results. Our third quarter revenue of $775 million surpassed last year's third quarter revenue by 6.2% and is a record for any quarter in our company's history. Shipments per workday increased by 12.2% compared to last year, obviously impacted in a positive way from the shuttering of operations at a competitor began in late July. The sudden elimination of industry capacities presented challenges for customers and carriers alike. but the transition to other providers seems to have gone relatively smoothly. At SIA, we monitor our critical service indicators daily. I was pleased to see that despite the influx of freight in a matter of days, we were able to sustain very high levels of service. In our view, it was critical to maintain high service levels as this time provided a unique opportunity to show customers our differentiated service in the midst of industry disruptions. As we've been able to maintain high service levels, pricing has been positive, and our yield, or revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel surcharge, increased by 8.4% compared to last year. The reported yield improved in part due to the 5% decline in average weight per shipment, but despite the lower weight, revenue per shipment excluding fuel surcharge still increased by 3%. The weeks and months that have followed the major industry disruption has been marked by long days for our employees. We've been putting forth a concentrated effort to maintain great customer service and meet the needs of our customers. We supplemented our growing line haul network with additional purchase transportation where needed to keep our network fluid and service levels high. At the same time, we've also incurred quite a bit of overtime to handle the immediate step up in volumes we've felt. Since the end of June, we've hired and onboarded more than a thousand new SIA employees. The skill of that hiring effort and the training that is required on board each associate has been a necessary cost that had to be absorbed. Our third quarter operating ratio of 83.4% compares to 82.7% posted in the second quarter of 2023 and 82.4% posted in the third quarter of last year. I'll now turn the call over to Doug for more details from our third quarter results.