Tuesday, November 10, 2026
The news that moves freight
Air Nov 10, 2026 · 7 min read

Radiant and Forward Air: the growth is in domestic freight

The trucks are carrying US forwarders’ profits this quarter

Radiant Logistics, a US forwarder that works through a network of agent-run stations, reported adjusted EBITDA of $12.2m for the quarter to 30 September 2026. That was up 79.4% from $6.8m a year earlier. Revenue rose 23.4% to $279.8m, the company said in its release on 9 November. Net income to Radiant was $6.1m, or $0.13 a share, against $1.3m a year earlier.

Forward Air reported the same afternoon. Its operating income almost tripled, from $15.0m to $43.9m. But its two big businesses moved in different directions. Expedited Freight, its own truck network, grew revenue 30.5%. Omni Logistics, its forwarding, customs and contract logistics arm, shrank 8.0%.

Our view is simple. For mid-size US forwarders, the growth is now at home. It is in domestic trucking, intermodal and brokerage. International forwarding is still doing fine. But it is not where the big gains are coming from, and the companies are telling us so.

What Radiant actually reported

The numbers in Radiant’s release are strong on every line. Adjusted gross profit, which is revenue minus what the company pays carriers, rose 15.3% to $68.6m. Income from operations rose from $2.1m to $8.3m. Adjusted EBITDA margin, measured against adjusted gross profit, rose from 11.4% to 17.7%.

Investing.com reported that analysts had expected revenue of $236.28m. Radiant beat that by about $43.5m.

CEO Bohn Crain was clear about where the gain came from. “Our year-over-year improvement was driven principally by our U.S. operations, where adjusted EBITDA more than doubled,” he said in the release.

Two things flattered the comparison, and Radiant said so. It cut costs by consolidating its transportation management systems, the software that books and tracks shipments. And last year’s quarter carried a $1.3m credit loss linked to the First Brands bankruptcy, which did not repeat. So part of the 79% is a cleaner base, not new business.

Radiant is also building a domestic business on purpose. “We are keen to accelerate the growth of our bi-modal brokerage platform,” Crain said. Effective 1 October, it bought the Dallas operations of Whitacre Logistics Services through its Radiant Road & Rail unit. Whitacre is an intermodal and over-the-road brokerage serving building materials, industrial and packaging customers. Radiant did not disclose a price. Part of it is an earn-out, meaning it is paid later and depends on how the business performs.

The balance sheet gives room for more. In August Radiant amended its $200m revolving credit line, pushing maturity to 7 August 2031. It raised the acquisition accordion from $75m to $100m. At 30 September it had $25.0m drawn and $27.8m of cash, so no net debt.

On the call, Crain said Radiant’s usual deal remains a smaller tuck-in, “call plus or minus $2 million EBITDA type tuck-ins”. But he also said the stronger balance sheet “creates an environment that would allow us to do larger deals.”

Shares closed up 2.81% at $9.14 on 9 November and rose another 7.89% to $9.861 after hours, according to Investing.com. The last time Radiant reported, on 14 September, the stock rose 19.5% the next day, according to StockTitan.

Forward Air: the forwarding arm is not the problem it looks like

Forward Air’s headline numbers improved too. Operating revenue rose 6.7% to $673.9m. Net income from continuing operations was $9.1m, against a $23.8m loss a year earlier. CEO Shawn Stewart said: “Operating income for the quarter almost tripled from last year coming in at $44 million compared to $15 million in the third quarter 2025.”

The segment split is where it gets interesting. Expedited Freight revenue rose 30.5% to $337.4m, with operating income of $36.5m. Tonnage rose 15.6%. Revenue per hundredweight, a standard measure of price per 100 pounds, rose 7.8%. Excluding fuel surcharges, it fell 2.6%. So the growth came from more freight, not a higher base price.

Omni Logistics revenue fell 8.0% to $312.3m. But look inside the segment. Air and ocean revenue rose 24.9% to $96.8m. Contract logistics rose 12.3% to $109.4m. The whole decline came from Ground, which fell 35.6% to $106.0m. The release does not explain the Ground drop. Omni’s operating income actually rose 25.2% to $12.2m, so its margin improved from 2.9% to 3.9%, the release shows.

So Omni’s forwarding is growing. What is shrinking is a ground business inside it, while Forward Air’s own truck network takes off.

The debt still decides what happens next

Forward Air is not a free agent. At 30 September it had $1,696.5m of long-term debt and $184.9m of cash. Shareholders’ equity was negative, at a $108.9m deficit. Last-twelve-months consolidated EBITDA was $341.7m. Gross debt is about five times that, by our arithmetic. It also took a $244.0m goodwill impairment earlier in the year. Goodwill is the premium paid for past acquisitions, and an impairment admits part of it was not worth what was paid.

CFO Jamie Pierson called the quarter’s consolidated EBITDA “yet another stair step up in performance” and said the company reported “our lowest net leverage ratio since the first quarter of 2024”. The release did not give the ratio.

The background matters here. Forward Air ran a strategic review in 2025 that looked at selling the whole company. In May 2026, Truck News quoted Stewart saying “no deal was reached” and reported the company would sell non-core assets instead: the Intermodal segment and two smaller legacy Omni businesses. In July, Transport Topics reported the Intermodal sale was expected to conclude by the end of 2026, and cited a Susquehanna analyst’s estimate of about $220m in proceeds. It also reported that Forward Air had signed a nonbinding memorandum to keep at least 50% of the business of a customer worth about $250m a year.

The Q3 release gives no guidance and does not update the Intermodal sale. Intermodal is still reported as a segment, with revenue up 8.8% to $63.5m. Business sales brought in $16.2m of cash in the quarter.

What the two calls say about the market

Crain’s comments on the call describe the market forwarders are working in. On US trucking: “Tender rejections and other cyclical indicators remain well above balanced market levels throughout the quarter”. A tender rejection is when a carrier turns down a load it had agreed to haul at contract rates. High rejections mean capacity is tight.

On ocean, he said rates “have risen sharply since the onset of the Middle East disruption in late February”. On air, “elevated jet fuel prices and constrained Middle East capacity kept air freight rates firm.” He also warned that “elevated fuel prices and conflict-related rerouting have added cost pressure across air and ocean markets.”

On tariffs, he said: “So, I’m hopeful for some relief to the tariff dynamics, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect much relief in the next 24 months.” He pointed to US-Canada tariff actions, including Canada’s retaliatory measures from 8 September. He said tariff complexity, together with industry-wide refund filings on IEEPA tariffs (duties imposed under emergency powers), “continued to drive demand for our customs brokerage expertise”.

What this means for forwarders

First, customs and compliance work is not a short-term spike. If a CEO with a cross-border book expects two more years of tariff churn, forwarders should price and staff that work as a lasting product line, not overtime.

Second, domestic capacity is where shippers are paying. Both companies grew fastest where they sold US truck or intermodal capacity. A forwarder that cannot quote the inland leg, or find a truck when rejections are high, hands that margin to someone else.

Third, expect international margins to ease. Asked about normalisation, Crain said: “I would assume we would see margin characteristics of ocean come down a bit.” His CFO, Todd Macomber, added: “Air would probably come down a bit too.” That makes domestic brokerage more valuable as a balance in 2027.

Fourth, the buyers are out. Radiant has a bigger acquisition line and says it is getting “reverse inquiries” from businesses interested in it. Small US brokerages and agent stations should expect more calls.

Our prediction

Our call: Radiant announces at least one more domestic brokerage or intermodal acquisition by the end of March 2027. The bigger accordion, no net debt, a stated aim to grow brokerage and a deal closed only weeks ago all point the same way.

For Forward Air, our call is that the Intermodal sale is not signed and announced by 31 December 2026. That would miss the end-2026 timing Transport Topics reported. With debt around five times EBITDA, any delay keeps Omni’s forwarding growth tied to the parent’s balance sheet into 2027.

Sources

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