And an analogy would be somewhat like pure brokerage versus Power Only brokerage, at least in my mind. Werner Bridge is going to bring all of the qualities and attributes and flexibility and variability that Brokerage brings. But Power Only brings all of that plus that asset-backed nature and that fully integrated effect within the network. Werner Bridge is similar in that sense. We want to be able to give people that much more high-level visibility, efficiency, the ability to track, reload, use predictive AI to be able to maximize their utilization and minimize inefficiencies in the network but tie it to the Werner brand and tie it to what that means, which is still human engagement where human engagement is necessary and required and the ability to kind of lift up that customer and their expectations out of that pure digital brokerage marketplace that is purely – that is more transactional and less customer-centric.
That’s not who we are. That’s not how we do business. So this is going to be a journey. We’re on that path today. It’s not happening overnight or in the next quarter or two, but it’s a journey over the next, call it, 18 months that we’re really excited about.
Jack Atkins: Okay. That’s great. Thank you for the time.
Operator: The next question is from Jeff Kauffman with Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Jeff Kauffman: Thank you very much. I was just looking at the big change in length of haul in the One-Way Truckload, about 690 miles – 692 last year, dropping to 604 this year. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the dynamics in the marketplace that caused that differential. I imagine with the port situation backed up, that was part of it. But I’m just curious if there was something similar in Dedicated. And can you give us an idea of how much that big drop in length of haul might have affected the revenue per total mile?
Chris Neil: Yes, I’ll take that one, Jeff. This is Chris Neil. We’ve been having length of haul contraction over the last several quarters, as really the industry has, due to just a number of different things with the regionalization of rate, our Dedicated – I think your question is TTS related. So our Dedicated fleet continues to grow as a percentage of TTS. Dedicated length of haul on average is much shorter than what we do on the One-Way side. And then we’ve got a couple of acquisitions over the last two years, specifically with regard to ECM that had a more regional footprint than what our One-Way Trucking organic fleet had. And so all those things acting together have resulted in a little bit lower length of haul.
You will notice that on One-Way Trucking this quarter, we were finally able to overcome a year-over-year negative miles per truck trend that had occurred over multiple quarters leading up to this quarter. It didn’t increase significantly, but we did end the sequential declines or the sequential year-over-year declines in One-Way Trucking. And we do think that we’re headed toward better utility for a number of different reasons in the future here. We’ve built that One-Way Trucking segment on cross-border Mexico. We’re focused on engineered business, and we’re focused on expedited business. And we’ve made progress on all three of those fronts, which have enabled us to, I think, kind of turn the corner as it relates to length of haul.
Jeff Kauffman: Well, I appreciate that clarity, but this is just One-Way Truckload. 692 down to 604, that’s almost a 13% reduction in length of haul. So you’re showing a change in revenue per total, call it, 5.2% to the downside, excluding fuel. I was wondering how much this change in length of haul accounted for out of that 5.2% reduction. That’s what I’m going at here.
Derek Leathers: Yes. Well, clearly, as length of haul shortens and as we look to engineer more of the fleet, which has been a heavy, heavy focus during this downturn, is to try to further tighten the belt on the engineered lanes and get less and less random in the application of our assets. You’re going to see a rate per mile offset to the positive because the shorter length of haul is going to have someone to carry a higher rate. That’s why, ultimately, we often will look back and talk in terms of revenue per truck per week or actually, on the One-Way side, it’s more of a revenue per day metric that we’re constantly trying to analyze and make sure we’re utilizing those assets efficiently. Frankly, right now, as we went to the bid season, we talked a lot in the prepared remarks about pricing discipline.
We stayed very disciplined with our pricing, which translated, frankly, to a larger portion of our fleet being in that spot market. We were prepared and willing to do that compared to contractually binding the fleet at rates that we felt were not sustainable and not indicative of the reinvestment necessary to serve that business. And so the shakeout in those One-Way bids was – call it, the turnover in the bid was a little higher than what we’ve experienced for the last several bid cycles, not unexpected in a down market. But whenever you hold a discipline in price, you see more mix change in your award. You might hold revenues but have a 60% different mix. And it’s about what you then accept and integrate into this new engineered environment that makes the difference.
And we think we’ve come out of that in the right place with the right amount of business contracted and with more spot exposure than we’d like, but that’s sort of low for a less duration than it would have been had we chased rate through the bid process.
Jeff Kauffman: Okay, Derek. Thank you.
Derek Leathers: Thank you, Jeff.
Operator: The next question is from Eric Morgan with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Eric Morgan: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask on Dedicated pricing, specifically your guidance for 0% to 3% for the year. I know you’re up 3% in the first half. So the midpoint obviously implies flat for the back half. So just wondering if you could discuss some of the puts and takes there and the outlook. And what are the chances that could dip negative and maybe even bleed into early 2024 at that kind of rate?
