Marten Transport Q1 Profit Slumps 55.2% to $4.3 Million

Marten Transport profit in the first quarter of 2025 more than halved on a year-on-year basis for the sixth straight quarter.

Mondovi, Wis.-based Marten’s results took a hammering from both the freight recession and uncertainty precipitated by the Trump administration’s tariff regime, the company said April 16.

Marten posted net income of $4.3 million, or 5 cents per diluted share, in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a $9.6 million, 12 cents per diluted share profit, in the year-ago period.

The company’s Q1 revenue totaled $223.2 million, down 10.6% from $249.7 million in the first three months of 2024.

Marten reported truckload revenue of $104.391 million in Q1, a 6.4% decrease compared with $111.551 million a year earlier.

Dedicated division revenue fell 14.8% year on year in the most recent three months to $73.625 million from $86.46 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue at Marten’s intermodal unit slumped 24.1% to $12.117 million from $15.972 million a year earlier.

Marten ranks No. 38 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America, No. 5 among refrigerated carriers, No. 23 on the list of the largest truckload carriers and No. 16 among intermodal/drayage haulers. It also ranks No. 93 on the TT Top 100 logistics companies list.

The carrier’s overall operating ratio was 97.4 in Q1, compared with 95.1 in the same period a year earlier.

Carriers’ OR provides insight on how well a company is balancing its costs and revenue generation. The lower the ratio, the better a company’s performance.

Marten’s truckload division posted an OR of 100.3 in Q1, compared with 99.6 in the same period 12 months earlier. The company’s dedicated unit reported an OR of 93.4, compared with 89.3 a year earlier. Intermodal operations at Marten posted an OR of 107.1, compared with 101.2 in the first three months of 2024.

“Our earnings have continued to be heavily pressured by the considerable duration and depth of the freight market recession’s oversupply and weak demand ‑— and the cumulative impact of inflationary operating costs, freight rate reductions and freight network disruptions,” Executive Chairman Randolph Marten said in a statement accompanying the results.

“We remain focused on minimizing the freight market’s impact — and now the impact of the U.S. and global economies with the current trade policy volatility — while investing in and positioning our operations to capitalize on profitable organic growth opportunities, with fair compensation for our premium services, across each of our business segments,” he added.

A continued excess of capacity and subdued demand hurt carriers in 2024, but 2025 was expected to see an improvement, particularly as the year progressed.

However, uncertainty over U.S. economic health instead grew as the first quarter unfolded, with Trump administration tariffs and threats of tariffs scuttling widespread optimism about freight volumes and capacity utilization.

The World Trade Organization on April 16 cut its world merchandise trade expectations compared with the start of the year by three percentage points to a 0.2% decline. U.S. exports are forecast to drop 12.6%. WTO economists expect world GDP to grow by 2.2% in 2025, down 0.6 percentage points compared with earlier estimates.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the Economic Club of Chicago on April 16: “The data in hand so far suggest that growth has slowed in the first quarter from last year’s solid pace.”

“The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated,” he added. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”