MW Trucking company J.B. Hunt says customers are 'waiting for the dust to settle' on tariffs

By Bill Peters

Things are changing 'by the day or the tweet,' CEO says

Trucking and logistics provider J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. on Tuesday said that its customers are still trying to figure out how to adapt to new tariff-related stresses, and said it had lost some business to rivals offering lower shipping prices.

Shares fell 6.3% after hours on Tuesday.

The remarks from executives came during J.B. Hunt's $(JBHT)$ conference call to discuss its first-quarter results, which were better than what Wall Street analysts expected.

But they also came as the U.S.-led trade war - and fluctuations with negotiations and exclusions - upends planning for the retailers and other businesses that depend on the company for deliveries.

"Our customers continue to plan for multiple 'what-if' scenarios, but most of them are waiting for the dust to settle to determine how tariffs might influence and change their short- and long-term business strategies," Spencer Frazier, the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing, said during the quarterly earnings call.

Those remarks echoed those of Levi Strauss & Co. $(LEVI)$ last week. Executives there also said they needed to "see where the dust settles" to weigh the impact of President Donald Trump's efforts to tax imports from other nations.

"As part of this scenario-planning process, some customers are considering ways to alter supply-chain freight flows and/or their country-of-origin sourcing," Frazier said Tuesday. "But these changes will be part of a much longer decision process."

Or, as Chief Executive Shelley Simpson said: "We recognize things are changing, and that's changing by the day or the tweet or the moment."

While Trump has ratcheted up trade tensions with China, the trucking industry has suffered from a multi-year "freight recession." That slump has been marked by higher costs and lower demand, as inflation forces businesses to rethink how they get products sent to their warehouses and stores. J.B. Hunt has tried to take steps to control its expenses.

During J.B. Hunt's first quarter, revenue slipped 1% year over year to $2.92 billion. The company earned $1.17 a share.

Shipping volumes for its large intermodal business, which transports goods at least partly by railroad, rose 8%. Management said it had lost some business as it tries to stay "disciplined" with freight rates, as it competes on bids for transportation services. The company said the bidding season was still ongoing, and that it was awaiting the outcomes of some larger ones in the months ahead.

Within last-mile shipments, or the final stretch of a product's journey to the consumer, demand for bigger items like furniture, exercise equipment and appliances was muted. But the company cited solid demand from off-price retailers, which have drawn both lower- and higher-income shoppers seeking bargains.

Trump last week announced a 90-day pause on the harshest tariffs, introduced earlier in the month, excluding China. He said he would institute a "substantially lowered reciprocal tariff" of 10% on most countries during that pause.

While there had been some possible signs of consumers stocking up ahead of the imposition of tariffs in an effort to avoid potential price increases, J.B. Hunt on Tuesday said that not many of its customers had pulled forward their shipments.

The National Retail Federation, an industry group, said last week that it expected shipments of cargo into the U.S.'s big container ports to drop "dramatically" starting next month, as Trump tries to reshape global trade to favor the U.S. more. Trump has said his tariffs will bring back more manufacturing to the U.S., although others have said that process would take time.

J.B. Hunt said between 20% and 30% of its intermodal shipping volume originated on the West Coast, a big hub for imports from Asia. But it said it was difficult to quantify what portion of that came from China.

As of the close of trade on Tuesday, shares of J.B. Hunt were down 26.2% over the past 12 months.

-Bill Peters

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April 15, 2025 19:52 ET (23:52 GMT)

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