That said, we’ve made a commitment to our shareholders to delever and we’re going to play through to that. I think that as you look at our stock, I mean, we’ve completely decoupled from any correlation relative to our peers. So we’re not — I mean, truly the correlation is zero relative to our peer group. And so when you look at it, the only thing that we can think of is kind of volume constraints aside to your point. But the only thing we can think about is, look, we’re a lever name, right, relative to our peer group. We think our leverage profile is manageable. It’s extremely friendly, covenant-light paper. There’s no near-term maturities. But at the end of the day, when you look at us versus our peers and they average half a turn of leverage — we’re at gross leverage of 3.3 times in kind of a risk-off environment, we could see how we get penalized for that.
And look, at the end of the day, if you normalize our debt load you took out the preferred dividends and you look at us relative to our peers, you add another $1 per share of EPS, right? And so the optics of risk of Daseke given our current leverage profile, the amount of cash that’s going into the pockets of our lenders and not going into the pockets of our shareholders is something we’re extremely mindful of. So we’re balancing that, but there will be additional repayments of debt in the near-term. I can’t give you a number yet. But both of those are on the table, but we’re absolutely going to prioritize delevering the company.
Jason Seidl: Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me. And my last one before I turn it over to somebody else. I guess I was surprised to see the pressure on the high security cargo given all that’s been going on globally on a geopolitical basis. Can you maybe give us some more details on what’s going on with the end market?
Aaron Coley: Yes. I think that one — there’s really kind of two things going on. I mean there were some pretty sizable loads that I think the DoD shifted a little bit to rail, which they don’t typically do. But they had a little bit more time and some of those larger loads weren’t as time sensitive. So they shifted a little bit of capacity a couple of months to rail. And then honestly, you’ve got a lot of our competitors, which is a tight group of qualified carriers that can move the stuff we’re moving. But those guys are all doing the same things we are, where they’re looking at end markets going what end markets are still extremely attractive and they’re shifting capacity around to capture more upside within those markets.
And high security has been one that’s been completely resilient from a volume standpoint and a rate standpoint. So we intermittently see that. We saw it at the beginning of Q1 and kind of January or February. That competitive dynamic abated. We saw it a little bit this quarter, but the market — the underlying market, the volumes are absolutely still there, and we think they’re absolutely going to still be there for the foreseeable future based on our feedback from our customers. So just kind of an anomaly.
Jason Seidl: I appreciate that. Jonathan and team. I appreciate the time.
Jonathan Shepko: Thanks, Jason.
Aaron Coley: Thanks, Jason.
Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.
Ryan Sigdahl: Hey, good morning guys.
Jonathan Shepko: Good morning, Ryan.
Ryan Sigdahl : Curious on the CapEx guidance, what percent of that is new tractors and equipment versus used?
Jonathan Shepko: It’s all new. It’s all new, Ryan.
Ryan Sigdahl : Any thought to — I guess the secondary markets oversupplied, you’re not getting as much for your tractors you’re selling in. There’s all kinds of capacity leaving with presumably equipment hitting the market, I guess, why not shift from new equipment strategy and to lightly used.
Jonathan Shepko: That’s — look, Ryan, you’re spot on. I mean, that’s something that we’re evaluating for next year. We — part of the rationale is, look, we had some legacy, I mean, look, this is a long story, right? You’ve been around it the whole time. But I mean we’re trying to get our fleet age down, our company truck fleet age down as well as our LP fleet age to a reasonable age. There were some deferred CapEx from years ago on the trailer side of things. So we needed to spend this money, again, to be well positioned for the upturn. And so we needed the new equipment right now, our company truck fleet age is closer to two, low two years of age. And we have a pretty young trailer fleet as well. So I think, prospectively, what we’ll do, particularly next year, in addition to kind of moderating the absolute kind of quantum of CapEx, we’ll shift some of that to the used truck market.
I mean, those prices kind of peaked to where we’re at today, so peak 2022 to current the average used truck prices come down 40%. So it’s — we think it’s an attractive buy. And so we’ll use that to kind of supplement here and there next year. So it will be a combination of new and used trailers next year — sorry, new and used trucks enter earlier next year.
Ryan Sigdahl : Makes sense. Switching over, curious for an update on the wind market specifically and if any expectations on a rebound in 2024, if that has changed? And then secondly, kind of to that, I guess, does that dose have any exposure to the offshore activity? Or is it primarily onshore within the wind market?
Jonathan Shepko: Yes. So right now, we actually had a pretty good quarter this quarter with wind. As you know, it’s closely tied to the production tax credits and what’s going on there. And so we did have a positive quarter. It is all domestic wins. So there’s not a lot of international exposure. We’ve looked into that. And we just can’t — and we talked to other companies about partnerships, joint ventures and things like that to get some exposure there. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense for that. We do think that — and we’ve got exposure to really the primary three OEMs that probably represent 90% of the wind market. And one of them is really bullish on wind in 2024. One of them is kind of flat, and one of them is it could be a rougher year. So we’re, I think, net-net, forecasting probably some kind of modest uptick next year for wind. But we think the real kind of — the stronger recovery for wind is probably going to be 2025.
