I mean, you’re coming up on people having to buy tags and pay for their annual insurance and with all the geopolitical things, if fuel goes up. We’re going to get to a breaking point here for long where, you know, folks can’t run stuff and lose cash in perpetuity.
Jack Atkins: Yes. No, that makes, that makes sense. I just wanted to kind of get you to flesh out a bit. So just a, you know, couple of other questions for me and I’ll hand it over. But, you know, we think about the fourth quarter and some of the, you know, shorter-term impacts related to the auto strikes or the cyberattack at a customer. You know, is there any way to maybe frame up the impact that that’s having to, to your fourth quarter results? I mean, absent those, you know, would you have expected maybe, you know, results to be flat or maybe improve sequentially from an earnings perspective?
Paul Bunn: I would — Jack, I would tell you absent those, we probably would have been around flattish quarter-over-quarter.
Jack Atkins: Okay.
Paul Bunn: You know, there’s less work days in Q4 with all the holidays and there’s really — you know, we don’t play much in the peak anymore. There’s not much peak out there. And so, you know, I would have told you we would have probably been flattish and, you know, kind of, like we said, I think we’ll be down sequentially, but I still think it’ll be a nice fourth quarter.
Jack Atkins: Okay. Yes.
Paul Bunn: The bottom is not going to fall out from under or anything. And so it will be –
Jack Atkins: Right. I mean, you said modest, it’s just a modest decline, right?
Paul Bunn: You know, modest. Yes.
Jack Atkins: Okay. That makes sense, Paul. And I just — I guess maybe kind of shifting gears to one other topic and that’s the underlying Dedicated operations. You know, margins have improved a good bit there with the addition of Lew Thompson. But could you maybe — you know, I know it’s been sort of a longer-term strategic focus to improve the profitability of the core Dedicated business. You’ve got the auto strikes going on there. So I know that kind of clouds it a bit, but could you maybe talk about the progress you’re making there in terms of the organic Dedicated operations?
Paul Bunn: Yes. You know, we talked a little bit and to go back to Lew Thompson and so I think you’ll see that truck grow next year. I think we’re probably 90% through the weed and feed plan. And so, you know, Dedicated has been hard to grow in this environment with the one-way truckload market being as low as it is. I would say our pipeline is really robust, but, you know, folks are reluctant to pull the trigger because they can save a little bit of money by running, you know, three months more or six months more or whatever in the one way world. But I think you’ll see a lot of that capacity come back into Dedicated. When rates start heading north, I think you’ll see a lot of Dedicated contracts start getting signed. And so again, just to summarize that, I think we’re through the majority of the weed and feed.
There’s only, I would say, you know, 10% of the business we’re probably still not happy with. I think you’re going to see Lew Thompson grow, and we’ve got a strong pipeline on, call it, the non-poultry Dedicated. It’s just going to be a function of, you know, when one-way truckload rates start moving in the other direction, you’re going to see some folks, I think, start locking in on some of this, you know, pipeline work we’ve been working on for the last year.
Jack Atkins: Okay. All right, guys. I’m going to hand it over to somebody else. Really appreciate the time. Thank you.
Operator: And our next question comes from Michael Vermut from Newland Capital. Please go ahead, Michael.
