After losses widened in the first quarter of the year, U.S. Xpress has cut its corporate staff for the third time in the past year.
U.S. Xpress declined to detail the number of staff reductions it has made this spring in preparation for its merger with Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings, a Phoenix-based trucking giant that announced plans in March to buy U.S. Xpress for more than $800 million.
In a statement Friday, U.S. Xpress spokeswoman Mary Fortune said the staff cuts were made in response to a slowdown in shipping activity.
"We did recently make the difficult decision to reduce roles in a few business areas in response to challenging market conditions," she said in a statement Friday. "Our industry is experiencing a prolonged lack of freight demand that has negatively affected trucking and logistics companies. We are no exception."
FreightWaves, an industry news service, reported U.S. Xpress recently trimmed another 150 jobs from its workforce, with most of the staff cuts coming in human resources, information technology, back office and the company's brokerage business, with some layoffs also in asset-based areas.
The latest round of layoffs at U.S. Xpress follows job cuts in 2022 that eliminated about 140 jobs at the corporate headquarters in both May and August.
U.S. Xpress has about 1,400 employees at its corporate office in Ooltewah and has more than 10,000 employees and contractors working as drivers, maintenance workers and in other logistics roles.
LOSSES...
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