M&A Operational Due Diligence, LTL Trucking - A $15B freight division of a global logistics services company sought assistance to evaluate an acquisition target, a $57M Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) US carrier.

The comprehensive assessment covered covering business strategy, operations and management strength, customer contracts, revenue and margin forecasts, costing and pricing methods, fleet asset quality and Capex requirements, insurance coverage, fleet safety and compliance, union agreements and pension obligations, competitive benchmarks, IT systems capabilities and potential Capex.

Analysis revealed declining revenue and distorted costing, risk associated with fixed price contracts in an uncertain rate environment, too many freight broker customers, below market sales compensation and efforts only producing small transactional wins, high variability in operating ratios indicating weakness in market pricing capabilities, significant unfunded pension liabilities, and freight assets aged well-beyond benchmarks, significant future Capex. The revised offer was accepted.