As usual, over the past few weeks, SCDigest has published its quarterly review of US truckload, rail and LTL carriers, based on their earnings reports for Q1 and related management commentary.

For the first time, we decided it would be fun to create a chart comparing some of those results across the three modes, which you will find below. Please note "unweighted" simply means it was a straight average across all carriers in each group, rather than weighting a metric such as group operating ratios by carrier revenues or volumes.

Q1 2013 Performance Across US Transportation Modes

Source: SCDigest

All three carrier groups did pretty well on the bottom line in Q1, with profit growth well above revenue growth (and volumes, we will add), though that is somewhat relative statement for the LTL sector, which swung among the five carriers we follow from a $44 million aggregate loss in Q1 2012 to about a $30 million Q1 profit this year.

Rail carriers are by far the most profitable, averaging net income equal to more than 17% of revenue, versus 5.1% for truckload carriers and only 1.6% for LTL. That situation of course is directly connected to the same sort of differential in operating ratios (operating expense divided by operating revenues, a key transportation industry measure), which has moved all the way down to just 71.2% for the four public US rail carriers (amazing), versus 89.4% for truckload carriers and only 96.4% for LTL. That is a good way to run a railroad.

Rail carrier Union Pacific says it will drive its operating ratio below 65% by 2017.

From a pure profitability perspective, Heartland Express on the truckload side and Old Dominion in the LTL sector continue to generally blow the rest of their competitors away, as can be seen by comparing their sector-best operating ratios versus the sector averages.

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