Jeff Kauffman: Thank you very much. And I’ll also echo congratulations, Greg, and congratulations, Marty. A lot of my questions have been answered at this point. Just a real quick one on fuel and the potential headwind that you were talking a little bit about, for ’23, if I just look at this quarter, fuel surcharge revenue up $97 million incrementally, fuel expense up $48 million incrementally, so — or $49 million. So, that the net of that was a positive $48 million. Total operating income was a positive $58 million. So, I guess part one is, is the math that simple, that of the $58 million operating improvement, $48 million was the fuel differential. And then I guess, if so, as I look at ’23, given where fuel is right now, can you put or quantify what the magnitude of that headwind would be, say, the fuel surcharge component coming down, which you alluded to in the January data, versus fuel expense?
Adam Satterfield: Yes, the short answer is that the math is really not that simple. Going back to prior comments, fuel is just one of many elements that get negotiated as part of a customer’s rate each year. So, it could be that we get more fuel surcharge in one particular more, more base rate in another. And so, trying to look out and measure what the surcharge revenue piece is versus what the potential expense might be is not really a one-for-one comparison in that regard. The surcharge, if a customer has decided to take on more variable exposure to that fluctuation in fuel is covering many more cost elements than just the cost of fuel and other petroleum-based products. Certainly that’s what it’s designed to cover, but that’s not everything that is covered by that variable component of pricing.
So, again, I think the — if you want to look back into a declining fuel environment, I would point people to look at 2015, and 2016. In ’15, the average price of fuel was down 30% that year. Of course, we had volume growth, it was a little different macro environment, and so as a result we were able to improve the operating ratio that year. In ’16, the average price of fuel decreased further. It decreased about 15% that year, and that was one of the years, as I mentioned earlier, that we had a 60 basis point increase in the operating ratio. That the overall macro was a little softer, volumes were certainly flattish that year. And so, a little bit different top line makeup, if you will. But so, that’s probably a little bit more relative comparison, is looking back at how some of those revenue changes quarter-to-quarter, and cost changes progressed in that year.
But we’re certainly managing through it. And we’re looking at — we’ve got contracts that turn over every day, and they progress through the year. So, if fuel stays where it is today, then we’re looking at a contract with a base rate of a fuel at $4.58 a gallon versus, last year, we were looking at it and it would have been $5-something per gallon. So, you just always got to look at what the current environment looks like, and then try to risk-adjust for do you think fuel prices may go up? If they do, again, how does the top line for each individual customer account change, and what do the cost inputs change? If fuel goes down, you do the same thing, and you try to make sure that those fuel scales, as they work on each customer account, that we’re still effectively getting paid for the service that we’re providing and, like Greg said, the value that we are offering.
And so that’s what we stay focused on. And it’s less important for us to look at the profitability of each customer account.
Jeff Kauffman: All right, thank you for the clarification. But math for the fourth quarter would be fair at face value, but there’s more uncertainty, to your point, looking to ’23. Is that the right way to think about it?
