The uncertainty of the U.S. presidential election in November is weighing on Canada’s already-strained freight market, said Alain Bédard, chairman and CEO of TFI International, Inc., because some customers are delaying shipments until the contest results become clear.
Bédard points to green energy businesses as an example. “If it’s candidate one, he’s against windmills, so that business is going to fall. If you take the No. 2 guy, well he likes windmills, he’s more green,” he said. “So that’s why we have these kinds of customers just sitting on the fence not knowing where the ball is going to drop—left or right.”
Additionally, the difficult trucking environment resulted in TFI’s 7% year-over-year drop in adjusted earning per share in the first quarter, which fell short of analysts’ expectation. Bédard called the truckload—a branch of the business that carries full loads to a client, rather than “less-than-truckload” deliveries that serve multiple clients in one run—in the first quarter “a disaster.”
