And so that supported some of that reported yield metric. Now the reverse could happen this year, especially as we get into the back half of the year. If the economy is improving, we’d expect weight per shipment to be higher, and that generally results in a lower revenue per hundredweight. So – but higher revenue per shipment. So it all kind of balanced out. We believe this year. That will be the more important factor, though, we feel like is will we start seeing some real growth in that revenue – or I mean, weight per shipment metric rather, that would mean that orders for our customers’ products are starting to increase. There’s more widgets for every shipment. And that’s what we hope that we’ll start seeing sometime soon here early this year.
From a cost per shipment standpoint, we saw a moderation in our cost per shipment throughout this year, and that’s what we’d anticipated. We originally had expected core inflation this year of 5% to 5.5%, and that’s pretty much where we finished. It was higher than that in the first half of the year, better than the average in the second. So I feel like our cost per shipment will likely get back into more consistent with our longer-term average, probably be somewhere around the 4% mark or so. And that 4% plus or minus where we land, obviously, you can do a little bit better than that if you get volume growth and you’re getting density and so forth, that drives a lot of operating efficiencies. We’ve dealt with the opposite over the last year, year and a half.
But that number, when you think about it, a lot of our line items, I mentioned the insurance premiums, but we’ve dealt with significant cost inflation in many of the income statement line items that we have over time. And fortunately, we’ve been able to improve operating efficiencies and do other things to mitigate that such that our longer-term inflation on a cost per shipment basis has been in that 3.5% to 4% range.
Thomas Wadewitz: Right. Okay. Yes, that’s all very helpful. Thanks, Adam.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Go ahead.
Bascome Majors: Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow-up on that last question. Based on the recent contract conversations, you said, certainly, your peers continue to raise price. Do you feel fairly confident you can maintain your historic 1 to 1.5 point spread above that cost inflation this year?
Adam Satterfield: Yes. That’s always the focus for us. And again, that’s why, especially when we get into stronger demand environments. We’ve historically seen competitors raising rates faster than us. And a lot of that in the past, I think, has been driven by competitors that generally run their networks closer to full utilization. And so if they’ve not been able to grow volumes in those large upswings, they take advantage of the strength in the market and get more by way of rate. And we like to do both and go back to reference 2018 and 2021, we outgrew the market in those years, 1,000 to 1,200 basis points, meaning on an LTL tons per day basis and we’re able to get good consistent yield increases in those years as well. But to us we feel like it’s better, it’s worked over time to be able to sit across the table from a customer and talk about our cost inflation and say we need cost plus.
The plus comes into supporting the long-term consistent investments that we’ve made in our service center network. We’ve invested $2 billion in our network over the past 10 years to consistently grow it. And we’ve increased our door count by about 50% over that last 10-year basis. And right now, there’s still some dust to settle, but the 10 years that ended 2022, the industry’s number of service centers are down about 10%, at least for the public carrier. So that’s something that’s created an advantage for us in the marketplace. It’s something that we always want to invest in, in capacity, invest in technology that’s designed to improve our customer service, to connect to our customers or to be able to drive operating efficiencies for us to keep our cost inflation low.
So we’re always investing in capacity and technology on behalf of our customers generally, and that’s why we’ve got to build those costs into our price model. But to us, it’s a lot easier to sit and say, we want a consistent approach, if you will, versus just something that’s more market-driven, trying to get big increases in when the market is in our favor and not as much as the markets in the shipper’s favor. It’s a formula that’s worked over time and it’s what we continue to focus on as we go forward.
Bascome Majors: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Jason Seidl with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Jason Seidl: Thank you, operator. Good morning gentlemen. How should we think about sort of normal seasonal patterns as we move throughout the year and your year-over-year comparisons with tonnage in terms of when you first started seeing the freight come over from Yellow?
Adam Satterfield: Yes. Obviously, it was midyear in the third quarter when they closed and we got that bump. We were at 47,000 shipments per day for the longest time.
Jason Seidl: Right. But you didn’t see it earlier as they started to bleed a little bit in June?
Adam Satterfield: Not really. I mean our monthly average was 47,000 from December of 2022 through July of 2023. So it’s flat there, and then we got an initial bump of about 3,000 shipments per day. And we stayed pretty consistent there from around 50,000 or a little bit north of that from August through November and then just had the seasonal drop through December. So as we’re starting out, right now, we’re a little below January of last year, which as just mentioned, is at 47,000 – if we get the bump, that the normal seasonal bump, if you will, that would sort of put us flattish with February and March. And then the question will be, are we getting some type of normal seasonality. If so, that would put the second quarter above the second quarter of last year, and then we can kind of go from there, if you will.
