16 Best Transportation & Logistics M&A Advisors in 2026

16 Best Transportation & Logistics M&A Advisors in 2026

Last updated: September 2026 · Last verified: September 2026

TL;DR. "Transportation and logistics M&A" is three markets sharing one keyword, the Three-Lane Pricing Split. Asset-based carriers price on EBITDA with the fleet inside the number: J.P. Morgan's fairness-opinion range for truckload was 4.0x-6.0x forward EBITDA, against eight public carriers at 4.0x-5.9x (U.S. Xpress DEFM14A, May 2023) and 4.5x-6.0x (Daseke DEFM14A, February 2024). Asset-light brokerage prices on net revenue: RXO paid $1.025B for Coyote, 0.32x gross revenue but 2.2x gross margin and 11.9x EBITDA, our arithmetic on the disclosed $3.2B, $470M and $86M (RXO 8-K, June 2024). Warehousing and LTL price on EBITDA plus the dirt: Yellow's 130 properties cleared at $1.88B to 21 bidders, five of them real-estate investors (Yellow 8-K, December 2023). Only this sector carries the Operating-Authority Gate: a stock purchase is a transfer of operating authority under FMCSA's own definition, and Form OP-FC-1 is due at least 10 days before closing (49 CFR Part 365). The freight recession ended in August 2026 after 42 months by Cass's count; ATA says the recovery is nearly all excess capacity leaving. Ranked on adviser-of-record evidence: The Tenney Group, Republic Partners, Capstone Partners, J.P. Morgan, Raymond James, Stifel, Houlihan Lokey, Wofford Advisors, Brown Gibbons Lang, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Evercore, Lincoln International, Left Lane Associates, Dinan Capital Advisors and Brentwood Capital Advisors. I run Peony, the data room 6,800+ customers run processes like these in; we are not an adviser.

Why is "transportation and logistics" three M&A markets rather than one?

Because a trucking company, a freight brokerage and a warehouse are priced in three currencies, sold to three buyer sets and advised by three benches that barely overlap. I'm Sean Yu, co-founder of Peony, a data room company. I have built and watched thousands of data rooms, about 1,000 of those as an investor at two funds with a combined $6.3 billion in AUM, and the rest across the 6,800+ teams Peony serves today. This guide is for one owner in three situations: an asset-based carrier with 50 to 500 tractors and $15M-$150M of revenue; an asset-light brokerage, 3PL or forwarder at $20M-$300M of gross revenue with one customer at 40% of the book; and a warehousing, fulfilment, final-mile or cold-chain operator whose owned real estate is a large share of the enterprise value.

A transportation and logistics M&A advisor is an investment bank, transportation broker or boutique that runs the sale, recapitalisation or capital raise of a carrier, intermediary or logistics operator: a fleet-and-EBITDA process with an FMCSA operating-authority transfer in trucking; a net-revenue process with a surety bond and customer consents in brokerage; an EBITDA-plus-real-estate process, often with a sale-leaseback in parallel, in warehousing. Label distinctions are in M&A advisor vs broker vs investment bank; this post sits under the best M&A advisors hub beside the industrial M&A advisors guide, and investors rather than advisers are in the logistics investors and transportation investors directories.

I built the bench on one standard, the Adviser-of-Record Ledger, a Peony-original evidence standard: a firm earns a rank only if I could find a dated transportation adviser-of-record credit in a primary source, an SEC filing, a counterparty's release or the firm's own dated tombstone; where evidence is thin the profile says so. Two things make this sector harder to evidence than automotive. The specialists publish named buyer-and-seller tombstones by the dozen and not one date between them, so an SEC filing is the only place a transportation adviser credit carries a date. And the most frequently named adviser on the trucking tape is a law firm: Scudder Law Firm of Lincoln, Nebraska appears in seven SEC-filed transportation releases from 2021 to 2026, on both sides, often as "transaction and legal advisor", a combined role that barely exists elsewhere; assume the counterparty's bench includes it.

Which advisers actually closed the transportation and logistics deals on the tape, 2019-26?

A short, repeating set of banks, two boutiques and one transportation broker. The Adviser-of-Record Ledger below is every transportation transaction where I could read the adviser roster in a primary document, with value and status as the cited filing states them.

Bottom line: fifteen deals, exactly one transportation broker among them, and J.P. Morgan named five times. The Tenney Group is the only transportation specialist named in any SEC filing, and it is named in the purchase agreement, not a press release. Two rows are the sector's honest counterweight: a $372M-revenue brokerage and a $1.025B brokerage changed hands with no adviser named for the seller.

Three reading rules. On a two-issuer deal each side names only its own advisers: Heartland's release on CFI names nobody for the seller; TFI's names J.P. Morgan. Carve-out sellers disclose the least: UPS named no adviser on Coyote or Andlauer. And most private transportation deals name no banker at all, so a list that says a firm "advised on" a private trucking deal without a filing, a dated tombstone or a party's release behind it is asserting, not reporting.

Will my business be priced on an EBITDA-plus-fleet multiple, on net revenue, or on the real estate?

On EBITDA with the fleet inside the number if you run trucks; on net revenue and EBITDA if you run a brokerage; on EBITDA plus a separately priced building if you run warehouses or an LTL network. Call it the Three-Lane Pricing Split, a Peony-original frame, and its first lesson is that no published, edition-dated multiple table for this sector exists: Capstone Partners' per-sector valuation table sits inside a gated PDF, Brown Gibbons Lang's Transportation & Logistics Insider is email-gated, and Armstrong & Associates publishes market size, not multiples. What exists is better: investment banks tell the SEC what these companies are worth, under a fairness-opinion standard, in merger proxies, and two of those are truckload deals from the same bank nine months apart.

What does an asset-based truckload carrier sell for?

4.0x to 6.0x EBITDA on the only sourced range, and the source is a bulge-bracket bank writing to shareholders. In the U.S. Xpress proxy of May 24, 2023, J.P. Morgan's selected truckload set and its multiples of firm value to 2024 estimated adjusted EBITDA were as filed, re-ordered here by multiple:

J.P. Morgan "selected a multiple reference range of 4.0x to 6.0x for FV/2024E Adj. EBITDA." Nine months later, in the Daseke proxy of February 15, 2024, the same bank set 4.5x to 6.0x on forward EBITDA against four public comps and 4.5x to 6.0x on trailing EBITDA against thirteen truckload precedent transactions since 2007. Three caveats travel with the range. Both filings date from the bottom of the freight cycle. The comp range is on forward EBITDA and the precedent range on trailing, so never quote 4.5x-6.0x without the denominator. And these are public multiples on large carriers: no source publishes what a 30-truck fleet with one customer clears, and I will not invent one.

Do buyers pay for tractors and trailers on top of EBITDA?

No. An EBITDA multiple already assumes the fleet that produced the EBITDA, and quoting a multiple and then adding equipment value is the most common owner error in this lane. Real estate is the exception, and the filings price it separately: Schneider paid about $390 million for Cowan Systems and about $31 million for its real estate under separate agreements, and Werner paid $37.8 million for 11 FirstFleet properties under a separate real-estate purchase on top of the roughly $245 million operating price, approximately $282.8 million in total, in the same 8-K. Per-tractor arithmetic, all ours:

Cowan and FirstFleet are both dedicated carriers and land at the top and bottom of that table, so the tidy line that "dedicated trades higher than irregular-route" does not survive a third data point: a per-tractor figure is an order-of-magnitude check, nothing more. What does hold is the Contract-Duration Ladder, a Peony-original reading of Armstrong & Associates' 2025 definitions: dedicated contract carriage runs on one-to-seven-year agreements, contract warehousing on one-to-three-year terms with some past ten, and brokerage on none. That ladder, not the trucks, is what a buyer pays up for, which is why FirstFleet's release led with customer tenure rather than trailer count.

One more number to hold against any multiple: ATRI's July 2026 cost study found truckload and refrigerated operating margins below 1.0% in 2025, flatbed at an average operating loss of 0.5%, tank at 4.0%, with only LTL and fleets above 1,000 trucks healthy. At a sub-1% margin a half-turn of multiple is a rounding error next to a half-point of margin: for most asset-based sellers the valuation conversation is an earnings conversation wearing a multiple's clothes.

What is an LTL network worth when no LTL multiple exists?

Its doors, and Yellow's liquidation printed the price. No SEC-filed EV/EBITDA multiple for an LTL carrier exists in the review period, so I publish none. At auctions held the week of November 27, 2023, Yellow sold 128 owned and two leased properties to 21 successful bidders for a total of $1,882,637,655, approved by the Delaware bankruptcy court on December 12, 2023 under Section 363. XPO paid $870 million for 28 service centers, about $31.1 million each; Estes Express Lines $248,720,505; Saia $235.7 million for 17 terminals; R+L Carriers $211.5 million; and All Star Investments $550,000 for its lot. The larger number that circulates for Estes is a pre-auction stalking-horse bid the auction superseded; it appears in no EDGAR filing, and the filed result is $248.7 million.

Five of the 21 winners were industrial real-estate buyers rather than carriers, Terminal Properties, Crown Enterprises, Realterm, Greenpoint and Jadian IOS, taking 8.3% of the proceeds, our arithmetic. XPO's own filed framing explains the bidding: a $59 billion industry with 77% of share held by the top ten, capacity "nearly flat for a decade," and a capex target of 8% to 12% of revenue through 2027. An LTL seller is selling a real-estate position with an operating company attached, and the auction proved the two have separable prices.

Is a freight brokerage valued on net revenue or gross revenue?

On net revenue and EBITDA, and the one large deal that discloses all three units shows why a gross revenue multiple means nothing on its own. RXO's June 23, 2024 release on Coyote Logistics states a $1.025 billion cash price for a business with "approximately $3.2 billion in revenue in 2023 with approximately $470 million in gross margin and approximately $86 million of adjusted EBITDA":

Knight-Swift paid 0.37x U.S. Xpress's total operating revenue. Those two revenue multiples look identical and describe opposite businesses: one bought $2.2 billion of revenue with 7,200 tractors under it, the other $3.2 billion of revenue with no trucks at all. Never accept a brokerage revenue multiple without the gross margin in the same sentence, and do not take 11.9x as "the brokerage multiple": it is one deal, by a public strategic with $25 million of disclosed synergies, mid-downturn.

What are warehousing and contract logistics worth, and where does the real estate go?

To a multiple the buyer states two ways, and to a separate line for the dirt. The only buyer-printed multiple in the lane is British: GXO's February 29, 2024 offer for Wincanton "implies an enterprise value multiple of approximately 7.0 times Wincanton's underlying EBITDA (IAS 17 basis) when factoring in full annual net run-rate synergies of £45 million (pre-tax) and 11.9 times pre-synergies", a 4.9-turn spread created entirely by the synergy assumption, our arithmetic. It is a UK deal on UK accounting, not a US warehousing multiple, and the lease-accounting basis changes the EBITDA denominator: the whole sale-leaseback question in one parenthesis.

The same seller priced two logistics assets sixteen months apart. UPS's Q3 2025 10-Q records the Coyote divestiture at $1.0 billion net of cash divested and transaction expenses, and the completed November 1, 2025 purchase of Andlauer Healthcare Group, a Canadian cold-chain and healthcare 3PL, for C$2.2 billion, about US$1.6 billion. Never print that as "$2.2 billion" without the currency. When a strategic rotates within logistics, the multiple follows the contract quality and the regulatory moat, not the asset class. Armstrong & Associates sizes the US 3PL market at $323.4 billion in 2025, split into domestic transportation management, international, value-added warehousing and dedicated contract carriage: "3PL" is four businesses.

Can I sell a freight brokerage when one customer is 40% of the book?

Yes, and the record shows what the buyer is actually pricing: the contract, not the percentage. RXO bought Coyote Logistics from UPS at a concentration no middle-market seller would survive on a pitch page; the release does not rank Coyote's customers, but it states that RXO "will continue to serve UPS's brokered transportation needs under a contract that runs through January 2030": the seller's own volume, underwritten as a signed term. Werner's FirstFleet release led with the same idea from the other direction: an average 17-year tenure among its top ten customers, printed above the trailer count. Call it the Concentration-Survives Test, a Peony-original frame: a concentrated customer is priced as a term, an escrow or a discount, in that order, and the contract, not the revenue chart, settles which one you get.

Three things move you up that ladder inside twelve months: a written, assignable contract with remaining term rather than a purchase-order relationship; a relationship held by two or three people in your organisation rather than by you alone; and a rising share of the customer's wallet rather than a flat one.

The separate and often larger risk is consent. Where the shipper contract carries a change-of-control clause, the buyer needs the customer's signature before closing, and in brokerage and forwarding that runs beside the FMCSA gate below: operating authority transfers on one clock, your biggest contract on another, and the customer usually learns of the sale on the second. Sequence that conversation with your adviser before the room opens, not after a bid arrives.

Is 2026 a good time to sell a trucking or logistics company?

Better than any month since early 2023, for a reason that flatters survivors rather than the market. Cass's August 2026 Transportation Index report, authored by Tim Denoyer of ACT Research, states that the shipments component "rose 5[.]6% m/m and 2.1% y/y in August, marking the first y/y gain since January 2023. This ends a 42-month downturn by this measure, the longest on record." ATA's July 2026 tonnage index, released August 18, was still down 0.5% year over year, and chief economist Bob Costello's sentence is the one to keep: "It is also true that the industry is seeing a recovery, but that is nearly all due to excess capacity leaving the market." The two indices measure different months, units and panels; no contradiction. Call the combination the Supply-Side Recovery, a Peony-original reading: rates are firming because competitors quit, not because shippers ship more, and a buyer will price your business as a survivor, not as a growth story, until your own numbers say otherwise.

The cost side is the harder read. ATRI's July 15, 2026 operational-costs study puts the industry average at $2.336 per mile in 2025, up 3.4% and the highest in the report's history, with carriers leaving another 10% of trucks unseated on average while truck age and annual mileage rose. Its May 19, 2026 insurance study, read in full in the diligence section below, has liability premiums up 18.6% between 2021 and 2024 while heavy-truck crash rates fell 2.6%: safety improved and the price of insuring it rose, and that gap is the litigation environment, priced.

Four regulatory facts move the buyer's model, and each has a status. The non-domiciled CDL restriction is a final rule, 91 FR 7044, effective March 16, 2026, limiting eligibility to holders of specific employment-based nonimmigrant status. English-language proficiency is enforced today as an out-of-service violation under the CVSA out-of-service criteria adopted after Executive Order 14286, but the rule codifying it, 91 FR 51422, is still a proposal with comments open to October 9, 2026: pending. A 25% Section 232 tariff on imported medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and covered parts, 10% on buses, took effect November 1, 2025, with USMCA-qualifying parts exempt until Commerce publishes a content process. And FTR attributes the 2026 Class 8 order surge partly to the tail end of the EPA 2027 NOx pre-buy, with a compliant model-year 2027 engine carrying an estimated $8,000 to $12,000 upcharge. A rule that shrinks the pool of eligible drivers is, from a buyer's seat, a moat around every carrier that already has them seated.

Who are the 16 transportation and logistics M&A advisors on this bench, and how are they ranked?

By transportation adviser-of-record evidence first and relevance to an owner-seller second. Within a lane, a counterparty's SEC filing outranks the firm's own dated tombstones, which outrank undated tombstones, which outrank research without deals. Across lanes, repeat sell-side evidence at the size this guide's readers sell at outranks a single bulge-bracket credit above $1B, which is why Raymond James's one 2026 credit on a family-owned carrier sits above Morgan Stanley's three; the metro bench is in M&A advisors in Omaha.

Positions 4, 10 and 11 are large-cap banks ranked on SEC-filed credits above $500M, and position 12 on a single ~$435M take-private; below roughly $300M of enterprise value they are the bank across the table, not your hire. Positions 15 and 16 are named on one deal each and say so.

1. The Tenney Group: the only transportation specialist named in an SEC filing

The Tenney Group, Franklin, Tennessee, dates itself to 1973 and is run by CEO Spencer Tenney. Its evidence is unique on this bench: Adams Resources & Energy's SEC-filed asset purchase agreement dated April 10, 2019, section 6.1, states that the sellers, EH Transport and EH Trucking, "have engaged the services of The Tenney Group LLC ('Broker') to serve as their broker" and are "solely responsible for the payment of any brokerage fee", which puts a date on the firm's own undated tombstone. Its 33 published deals name buyer and seller and no date: California Freight, Watt & Stewart and Sims and Sons Trucking to Trimac; Hagen Johnson to Heniff; Linn Star Transfer to Forward Air; Bartelson Transport to Lineage Logistics; and the only passenger credits in this guide, Fox Bus Lines, Wise Coaches and A&S Transportation to National Express. Its "only certified merger and acquisition firm focused solely on the transportation and logistics industry" line names no certifying body, and it holds no registration, which fits a broker on asset sales. Verdict: the best-evidenced pure transportation specialist in the country; ask for the last three dated closes.

2. Republic Partners: the only advisory brand registered under its own name

Republic Partners, Chicago, is the one firm on this bench and our automotive bench whose trading name appears in the SEC firm database as itself: Republic Partners, LLC, CRD 281607, SEC file 8-69677, active, no disclosures on file, FINRA-approved January 3, 2017, with an audited broker-dealer report on EDGAR dated February 18, 2026. Its site's entire disclosure is one sentence, "Republic Partners is a FINRA/SIPC Member". It advises "supply chain management, transportation, business services, and industrial" clients, lists TIA, IWLA and IANA memberships, names nine professionals led by managing directors Jonathan G. Britva, Robert S. Levin, Ronald C. Mui and Bradley J. Pickard, and publishes 13 named, undated transactions plus eight case studies, including a twelve-year buy-and-build-then-exit relationship with Genco and acquisition work for Seko, the only freight-forwarding credit here. Its warehousing roster runs LaGrou Distribution to Source Logistics and then Source Logistics to Palladium Equity Partners, the same firm on the platform purchase and the later recapitalisation. Verdict: the best-registered specialist for a brokerage, forwarder or warehouse sale; no date anywhere.

3. Capstone Partners: the only dated tombstone run, and it is bank-owned

Capstone Partners, Boston, runs a named Transportation & Logistics Investment Banking Team across five published sub-sectors, asset-light logistics, marine services, warehousing and fulfilment, logistics technology and specialised trucking, and publishes what no other specialist-style firm here does, dated tombstones: CSTK to Trane Technologies (2026), Stewart Transport's ESOP (2025), Supreme Auto Transport's investment from Nikkon Holdings (2024), Nova Coldstore to Lineage (2023), A&M Cold Storage to WillScot Mobile Mini (2023) and AAT Carriers to Covenant Logistics (2022). These are the firm's own claims: Covenant's February 10, 2022 filing on AAT names no adviser on either side. Its research is the freshest here, a 3PL Market Update dated June 29, 2026, whose per-sector valuation table is gated, so no multiple is attributed to it. Registration, from its footer: securities through Capstone Capital Markets LLC, CRD 132185, "a subsidiary of Huntington Bancshares Incorporated". Verdict: on published, dated evidence the strongest all-round platform here; an owner comparing "independent" advisers should know who owns it.

4. J.P. Morgan: five filed credits and the only two published fees

J.P. Morgan is the most-credited bank in US transportation: exclusive adviser to Daseke on TFI's roughly $1.1B purchase (December 2023), to the U.S. Xpress Special Committee on Knight-Swift's roughly $808M purchase (March 2023), to TFI International on the $525M CFI sale to Heartland (August 2022), to Whiplash on its sale to Ryder (December 2021), and co-adviser to Omni Logistics on Forward Air (August 2023). Its two truckload proxies are the sector's only published valuation and fee record. Verdict: the bank for a public carrier or a $500M-plus process; below that, the bank across the table.

5. Raymond James: lead sell-side on the freshest trucking deal on the tape

Raymond James & Associates "served as lead financial advisor to FirstFleet" on Werner's roughly $245 million cash purchase announced January 28, 2026, with Brentwood Capital Advisors as financial adviser; the same 8-K puts the all-in figure at approximately $282.8 million including 11 properties of real estate at $37.8 million, which is what the buy-side adviser's $283M refers to. FirstFleet, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, brought more than $615 million of revenue, about 2,400 tractors, 11,000 trailers and 37 properties near 130 customer sites, and made Werner the fifth-largest dedicated carrier in the country with about $18 million of expected annual synergies. Registration: CRD 705, St. Petersburg, Florida. Its site timed out to every request I made, so no banker roster is printed. Verdict: the credit a $100M-$300M dedicated carrier should ask about first.

6. Stifel: the only dedicated-carrier sell-side held by a mid-market bank

Stifel "served as exclusive financial advisor to Cowan Systems" on Schneider's roughly $390 million cash purchase announced November 25, 2024, plus about $31 million for real estate under separate agreements: a Baltimore family carrier founded 1924, primarily dedicated contract carriage with brokerage, drayage and warehousing, about 1,800 trucks and 7,500 trailers across more than forty locations, which took Schneider to over 8,400 dedicated tractors. Registration: CRD 793, St. Louis. Its co-manager slot on RXO's September 2024 equity offering is not an M&A credit and is not counted. Verdict: the reference credit for a family-owned dedicated carrier selling to a public consolidator, with a disclosed price and a separately priced real-estate leg.

7. Houlihan Lokey: the hardest LTL sell-side credit in the guide

Houlihan Lokey "served as financial advisor to Dependable" when Knight-Swift acquired the operating assets of Dependable Highway Express's non-union regional LTL division, effective July 30, 2024, a carve-out in which Dependable kept the rest of its supply-chain business. Price was not disclosed; Knight-Swift said the deal raised its LTL terminal and door counts about 10% and its coverage to about 70% of the US population. Registration: Houlihan Lokey Capital, Inc., CRD 17708; the inactive Houlihan Lokey Advisors, CRD 127835, surfaces first on BrokerCheck. Its site blocked every automated request, so the profile rests on the filing. Verdict: the credit that matters for a divisional carve-out, the hardest mandate in trucking.

8. Wofford Advisors: the highest evidence-to-marketing ratio on the bench

Wofford Advisors LLC, West Palm Beach, Florida, holds two SEC-filed credits and nothing else it cannot back: "exclusive strategic advisor to Werner" on FirstFleet (January 28, 2026) and "lead strategic advisor to Ryder" on Whiplash (December 13, 2021), and an EDGAR full-text search returns exactly those. Its site carries the only affirmative non-registration disclosure in this guide, "Wofford Advisors is not a FINRA registered broker-dealer", the correct posture for a pure buy-side strategic adviser. Its "$120B in executed transactions" is a career-and-team aggregate and is not used as fact here; its "$283M" FirstFleet figure is Werner's own filed all-in number, approximately $282.8 million against a $245 million operating price. Verdict: the buy-side boutique a strategic acquirer hires; a seller should expect to meet it across the table.

9. Brown Gibbons Lang: the broadest coverage map, undated

Brown Gibbons Lang, Cleveland, with its T&L lead in New York, runs Transportation & Logistics Infrastructure Investment Banking under its Infrastructure practice, "led by Craig M. Decker", Managing Director, with Enrico J. Certo, Director. Its four published areas are marine and aviation services including Jones Act carriers, ports and shipyards; rail; road, from dedicated contract carriage through temperature-controlled, bulk and tank, drayage, truckload, LTL and flatbed; and infrastructure such as EV charging and container leasing, the only firm here covering marine, rail and road under one roof. Its featured tombstones are undated and two are decade-old IPOs; the EnviroServe-to-Savage deal on its page belongs to a different BGL team. Its page's research stops in March 2022, but the media record is current: Decker on FreightWaves TV on trucking M&A, August 14, 2026, and quoted with Meghan Welch in The Maritime Executive, September 3, 2026. Registration: securities through Brown, Gibbons, Lang & Company Securities, LLC, CRD 29540. Verdict: the first call for a marine, rail, tank or drayage business; ask for the last three dated closes.

10. Morgan Stanley: exclusive sell-side on the largest brokerage take-private

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC "is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Echo" Global Logistics on The Jordan Company's September 10, 2021 acquisition at $48.25 a share, a stated 54% premium, and co-advised Forward Air with Citi on Omni Logistics in August 2023. On the DB Schenker purchase of USA Truck, the filing names Morgan Stanley & Co. Int. PLC, the UK entity, for the buyer, a distinction worth preserving. The Echo filing also carries the lane's conflict lesson, verbatim: "Citi is serving as financial advisor to TJC", and "Credit Suisse AG and Citi will provide financing for the transaction." The same bank advised the buyer and financed the buyer. Verdict: the sell-side reference for a public brokerage.

11. Goldman Sachs: the biggest asset-light credit in the public record

Goldman Sachs was financial adviser to RXO on the $1.025 billion purchase of Coyote Logistics from UPS, announced June 23, 2024, the deal that discloses the lane's three denominators, and co-adviser with J.P. Morgan to Omni Logistics on Forward Air. It was also a joint lead book-runner on the September 2024 RXO equity offering that funded Coyote, a capital-markets role and the source of the co-manager trap below. Verdict: the buy-side bank for a strategic building brokerage scale; not a seller's hire below $1B.

12. Evercore: sell-side on the one foreign take-private of a US carrier

Evercore "is serving as financial advisor" to USA Truck on DB Schenker's $31.72 per share cash acquisition announced June 24, 2022, about $435 million including assumed cash and debt, not subject to any financing condition, with Scudder Law Firm as counsel. Registration: Evercore Group L.L.C., CRD 42405, New York. One credit, for a public board, against a foreign strategic. Verdict: the template for a listed carrier fielding a cross-border strategic; no evidence below that scale.

13. Lincoln International: the deepest sub-sector map and a mostly European flow

Lincoln International, Chicago, publishes a Transportation & Logistics group of "20+ professionals", the only headcount on this bench, across twelve named areas from contract logistics and freight forwarding to healthcare and pharma logistics and waste transportation, led in the US by Gaurang Shastri and Ryan McDermott in Chicago. Of roughly sixteen published deals the clear majority are European and several are refinancings rather than sales; the US-relevant credits are DeSpir Logistics, a secure temperature-controlled carrier, to C.H. Robinson, Comprehensive Logistics to DQS Solutions & Staffing, and debt advisory on ICAT Logistics, all undated. Registration: CRD 42045. Verdict: the cross-border and capital-advisory option for a forwarder or contract-logistics operator with a European buyer list; not a domestic trucking bench.

14. Left Lane Associates: the Canadian comparison point

Left Lane Associates, Toronto, calls itself "North America's premier supply chain M&A experts" and claims more supply-chain deals than any other North American adviser "based on deal volume", with no count published. Its 33 named, undated deals are the only roster here labelled by sub-sector, and the roster shows how a specialist earns mandates through repeat acquirers, our count: Canada Cartage six times, Kriska Transportation Group four, The Kenan Advantage Group four, Titanium Transportation Group twice. Its one dollar figure is a $55M minority share sale for Highlight Motor Group to Credit Mutuel Equity. It has no SEC or FINRA record, as expected for a Canadian firm regulated through CIRO, which I did not check; never attach a CRD to it, because BrokerCheck returns three unrelated "Left Lane" firms. Verdict: for a US seller, a comparison point rather than a domestic option.

15. Dinan Capital Advisors: one credit, on a stock deal, and registered

Dinan Capital Advisors, Phoenix, "served as financial advisor to Knight-Swift" when it acquired 100% of the equity interests of UTXL, a Kansas City third-party logistics company, on June 1, 2021, alongside Scudder Law Firm as transaction and legal adviser. That is a stock deal, the kind where registration matters, and the firm is registered under its own name: CRD 157327, SEC file 8-68847, no disclosures on file. I did not retrieve its website or any other transportation tombstone. Verdict: named on the deal, not profiled; a registered buy-side adviser with one filed logistics credit.

16. Brentwood Capital Advisors: one credit, beside the lead

Brentwood Capital Advisors LLC, Nashville, was "financial advisor" to FirstFleet on its January 2026 sale to Werner, alongside Raymond James as lead, and is registered under its own name, CRD 118712, SEC file 8-53681, with disclosures on file. Its transportation practice is not established beyond that line; a Nashville firm co-advising a Murfreesboro carrier is the shape of a local relationship. Verdict: named on the deal, not profiled; ask what else it has closed in the sector.

How do I know whether a transportation M&A adviser is registered, and does it matter?

Ask a different question first: is your deal an asset sale or a stock sale? A private trucking sale is normally an asset sale of tractors, trailers, terminals and contracts, not a securities transaction, which is why The Tenney Group needs no registration and has none; a brokerage or 3PL sale is usually a stock or membership-interest sale, which is securities work, which is why Dinan Capital Advisors on UTXL is a registered broker-dealer. Republic Partners is the only advisory brand in this guide that appears in the SEC firm database under its own trading name.

Type the CRD, not the name. Republic Partners, CRD 281607, Chicago, is not New Republic Partners, a Charlotte wealth manager, not Republic Business Credit, a factoring lender, and not Valtus Capital Group; Capstone Partners, Capstone Capital Markets and Capstone Headwaters are one registered entity, not three firms; and three unrelated firms share the Left Lane name. Then ask for three dated closes with named counterparties.

Do I need an investment bank or a business broker to sell my trucking company?

A business broker below roughly $10 million of enterprise value, a specialist adviser or regional bank from there to about $300 million, and a bulge-bracket bank only if you are public or above $500 million: this guide's reading of the bench, not a published standard, and the boundary is visible in the evidence itself. The Tenney Group is contractually a "Broker" paid by the sellers in Adams Resources' SEC-filed asset purchase agreement; Dinan Capital Advisors is a registered broker-dealer on Knight-Swift's purchase of "100% of the equity interests" of UTXL. What a banker adds that a listing broker does not is competitive tension: a curated buyer list run to a timetable, structure negotiated across escrow, earn-out and working capital, and closing management through the operating-authority gate. A broker lists and matches, the right service on a small asset sale and the wrong one when two strategics could bid each other up.

Who did we leave off, and why?

Every firm below is real. What is missing is dated transportation adviser-of-record evidence, or the firm is in the wrong category, or its name was converted into a credit it never held.

The co-manager trap, and it is the likeliest factual error in any competing list. RXO's equity offering that funded the Coyote purchase priced on September 9, 2024 and names eleven banks that had nothing to do with the M&A advice: BTIG, Regions Securities, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Baird, Raymond James, Stephens Inc., Stifel, Wolfe, Oppenheimer, The Benchmark Company and Thompson Davis were co-managers on a stock sale, while Goldman Sachs was RXO's adviser on the acquisition. Raymond James and Stifel are ranked on their own filed sell-side credits, not on that offering; Stephens, KeyBanc and Baird produced no transportation adviser-of-record credit in this pass at all. The same discipline applies one rung up: on FirstFleet, Wells Fargo Securities and TD Securities gave Werner "financial advisory support", a lesser role than Raymond James's "lead financial advisor".

Wrong category. Cambridge Capital describes itself as the only specialist buyout and growth investor focused exclusively on supply chain and technology, with 10+ portfolio companies and $200M+ deployed: it is a buyer, not a bench. Armstrong & Associates is a research and consulting firm whose market-size data this guide cites and whose name should never appear as an adviser.

Could not be evidenced. Global Transportation Advisors is the strongest leave-off here: its domain does not resolve and it returns zero SEC records. Harris Williams is a real bank whose site served no readable content and whose T&L credits did not surface in EDGAR, so nothing about it is rankable. William Blair's logistics-adjacent filings are Proficient Auto Logistics equity work, and Jefferies' verified sector credit is automotive. Ryder's Cardinal Logistics, Impact Fulfillment Services and Dotcom Distribution acquisitions name no advisers in any release I could reach.

Claimed twice. TS3 Logistics to HTL Freight appears on both Republic Partners' and Left Lane Associates' transaction pages; I could not establish which held the mandate or on which side, so I credit it to neither.

How does the FMCSA operating-authority transfer gate work?

It is the transportation equivalent of the manufacturer-consent gate in a dealership sale, and buyers think a stock deal avoids it. A trucking, brokerage or forwarding business does not run on a corporate charter; it runs on operating authority issued by FMCSA. Call it the Operating-Authority Gate, a Peony-original frame. FMCSA's published definition of a transfer, 49 CFR 365.403(a), suspended since November 17, 2023, expressly reached "acquisition of controlling interest in a company through a purchase of company stock." The operative "T" text gets there by a different route: 365.403T(a) covers transfers of operating rights under 49 U.S.C. 10321 and 10926, and 365.403T(f) defines control to include control exercised "through or by common directors, officers, stockholders, a voting trust, a holding or investment company, or any other means." A change of control reaches the gate either way; only the citation changes. Operating rights under 365.403T(b) cover motor carriers, freight forwarders and property brokers, so the gate reaches all three lanes.

Cite the right sections. At 88 FR 80179, sections 365.401, 365.403 and 365.405 were each suspended indefinitely, and the "T" set is approval-based rather than notification-only: anyone who tells you FMCSA merely requires notice is reading a suspended rule. Under 365.405T an original and two copies of Form OP-FC-1 must be filed at least 10 days before consummation; after that waiting period the parties may close, "subject to the subsequent approval of the application by the FMCSA"; and the transferee may not commence operations under the acquired rights until it complies with the insurance and process-agent rules at 49 CFR part 387 subpart C and part 366. Sections 365.403T(g) and (h) then split transfers into Category 1, where the transferee is not an FMCSA carrier or affiliated with one, and Category 2, where it is: a sponsor and a strategic carrier buying the same company file from different postures.

Two boundaries matter as much as the rule. The Surface Transportation Board does not clear freight trucking deals: the load-bearing authority is 49 U.S.C. 14303(a) itself, which reaches "transactions involving motor carriers of passengers", with a $2,000,000 aggregate-revenue floor; the suspended 365.401 said the same from FMCSA's side, defining this subpart's scope as transactions not subject to section 14303. Bus and motorcoach deals are the exception. And for an intermediary the closing condition is the bond: 49 CFR 387.307 requires a $75,000 surety bond or trust fund on Form BMC-84 or BMC-85, and a broker's registration "shall remain in effect only as long as a surety bond or trust fund remains in effect" (eCFR text current as of September 1, 2026). Confirm the surety will write the bond for your buyer before signing. The federal transfer fee is $300 under 49 CFR 360.3T; the cost of the gate is the pre-closing filing and the compliance behind it, never the fee.

What do buyers actually pull in trucking due diligence, and how does it move the price?

Three to five years of insurance loss runs, your CSA BASIC percentiles and DOT safety rating, and driver turnover read as seated trucks by terminal and tenure, all read before the income statement, because in this sector the diligence that decides the price is operational rather than financial. ATRI's May 19, 2026 insurance study is the reason: between 2021 and 2024 respondents' per-mile liability losses rose 33.1% while heavy-truck crash rates fell 2.6%, premiums rose 18.6% to 10.2 cents per mile, and the $10 million to $15 million excess layer rose 45%. A buyer is pricing that tower, so a bad loss year becomes a price adjustment or an escrow rather than a walk; the same study found more retained risk in the primary layer correlated with lower combined losses and premium, as did six safety technologies the study identifies.

Sort the file into what you can still fix and what is already on the federal record. Fixable inside twelve months: seated trucks against owned trucks, since the industry ran about 10% unseated in 2025 and a fleet count is not a revenue base; deadhead, truck age and annual mileage, which pre-load the buyer's capex model; and which of those six technologies are actually deployed. Not fixable: your CSA history, crash record and DOT rating, which the buyer reads from FMCSA rather than from you.

What do transportation and logistics M&A advisers charge?

Nobody in this sector publishes a rate, and no fee survey I could verify exists, so the only sourced fees are two SEC-filed ones, both J.P. Morgan, both truckload, both far above middle-market scale. On U.S. Xpress, the proxy states that the company "agreed to pay J.P. Morgan a transaction fee equal to 1.50% of the merger consideration", estimated at approximately $12.5 million, of which $3.0 million became payable on delivery of the fairness opinion, on a deal with an enterprise value of about $808 million. On Daseke, the fee was "approximately $17.8 million, of which $5 million became payable upon delivery of the opinion" and the remainder contingent on closing, on about $1.1 billion. That is 70% to 76% contingent, our arithmetic, with a several-million-dollar opinion fee payable whether or not the deal ever closes, the part sellers do not expect. Never treat 1.5% as a middle-market rate; there is no source for one.

The rest of the cost stack, all from the same filings, sets the scale: $300 to FMCSA for the operating-authority transfer, $25,000 to a proxy solicitor plus a further $25,000 on stockholder approval if you are public, and a two-tier break fee of $6.3 million if the deal terminates within 45 days of signing or the extended notice period, and $12.6 million after, a deliberately cheap early window for a competing bidder. Below public-company scale the shape is a monthly retainer plus a success fee on one of the Lehman-family scales described in our M&A advisor fees guide, and the terms worth negotiating are whether the retainer is credited, the minimum, the tail period and exclusivity. Quality-of-earnings and legal costs are not published anywhere I trust.

What should the data room look like when the likely bidders are carriers you compete with for freight and drivers?

One room per bidder, staged tranches, and identity on every rendered page, because your best buyer can take your drivers and your lanes if the deal dies; in all three lanes the natural acquirer bids against you for the same capacity. For a 150-tractor dedicated carrier running four strategics and two sponsors, the build is:

• A separate data room per bidder on your own custom domain, with visitor groups walling competing carriers off inside one process, so no party sees another's tranche, activity or Q&A.
• Staged disclosure: anonymised lane data and fleet summaries first; loss runs, CSA and SMS history and the equipment list with VINs in the middle; the driver roster by tenure, customer-level rates and the lane-margin file last, after a bid you believe.
• Per-viewer dynamic watermarks on every rendered page, so a leaked rate sheet traces to the bidder that opened it.
• NDA gates before the room opens, with a countersigned PDF on Advanced NDA, and one-click revoke when a bidder drops out.
• Page-level analytics showing which bidder actually read the loss runs and the lane-margin file, the earliest honest read on who is real.
• Auto-indexing and structured Q&A, so the operating-authority package, the BMC-84 evidence and the insurance and process-agent filings are complete before the 10-day OP-FC-1 clock starts.

Peony is not an M&A advisor and does not place deals; the firms above do that. We are the room the process runs in, used by 6,800+ customers, and the build is in our M&A data room playbook and how to write a CIM. The Data Room plan is $52 per admin per month billed annually, the tier a sell-side process wants for dynamic watermarking, Advanced NDA and per-file permissions; Business is $30 per admin per month and covers the teaser stage; a Free tier exists; every tier includes unlimited free viewers. Pick your adviser first, then stand up the room.

So which transportation and logistics M&A adviser should you hire?

The one whose dated evidence sits in your lane, because this is three markets and the currencies do not convert. An asset-based carrier selling to a strategic should start with The Tenney Group, whose published acquirers, Trimac, Heniff, Forward Air, KAG, Lineage and Titan Transfer, are the buyers who will actually bid, and ask Raymond James or Stifel about the FirstFleet and Cowan patterns if the fleet is dedicated. A divisional carve-out is where Houlihan Lokey's Dependable credit matters; the FedEx Freight separation completed June 1, 2026 is the public template for the seven-agreement stack you will negotiate with less leverage. A brokerage, forwarder or 3PL is securities work: Republic Partners on registration and trade-body fit, Capstone Partners on dated flow, Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley above $1 billion. A warehouse or cold-chain operator has no specialist to hire: hire a generalist with a logistics bench and someone who can run a sale-leaseback in parallel. In every lane, your best buyer is your competitor.

Related resources

• Best M&A advisors, the cross-sector hub, and the industrial M&A advisors bench next door.
• Top logistics investors and top transportation investors, the buyer side of this market, plus M&A advisors in Omaha, the metro where the trucking deal teams sit.
• M&A advisor fees, M&A data room and how to write a CIM.

Frequently asked questions

Freight rates still have not recovered — is 2026 a bad time to sell a trucking company?

It is a better time than any month since early 2023, and not for the reason sellers hope. Cass shipments rose 2.1% year over year in August 2026, the first gain since January 2023, ending a 42-month downturn by that measure. ATA chief economist Bob Costello, on July 2026 tonnage still down 0.5%, says the recovery is nearly all excess capacity leaving the market. Rates are firming because competitors quit, so your survival through the downturn is the asset. ATRI's July 2026 cost study puts 2025 truckload margins below 1.0% and flatbed at a 0.5% operating loss.

My EBITDA dropped in 2025 with the freight market — should I wait to sell, or is waiting its own risk?

Waiting is its own risk when the drop is structural. What you can fix in 12 to 18 months is seated-truck count, deadhead and the claims file; what only the market fixes is rate. Carrying a fleet through the wait is expensive: ATRI's July 2026 report puts the industry cost at $2.336 per mile in 2025, the highest in its history, with 10% of trucks unseated on average. J.P. Morgan's two truckload proxies land between 4.0x and 6.0x forward EBITDA, so the multiple moved less than the earnings did.

Who are the best M&A advisers for trucking companies in 2026?

It depends which of three lanes you are in, because the benches barely overlap. For an asset-based carrier, The Tenney Group is the only transportation specialist named in an SEC-filed purchase agreement, as sellers' Broker in Adams Resources' April 2019 asset purchase agreement; Raymond James led FirstFleet's roughly $245 million January 2026 sale to Werner, Stifel was exclusive adviser on Cowan Systems' roughly $390 million sale to Schneider, and Houlihan Lokey advised Dependable on its July 2024 LTL carve-out. For brokerage and 3PL, Republic Partners and Capstone Partners. I run Peony, the data room 6,800+ customers use for processes like these; we are not an adviser.

Who are the top cold chain, warehousing and final-mile M&A advisers?

Nobody specialises in it, which is the honest finding: I found no cold-chain or warehousing-only advisory boutique. The named credits are J.P. Morgan as exclusive adviser to Whiplash and Wofford Advisors as lead strategic adviser to Ryder on the December 2021 fulfilment deal, the only one in the lane with an adviser named on both sides; Republic Partners, an IWLA member with the deepest warehousing roster; Capstone Partners' own dated tombstones on Nova Coldstore to Lineage and A&M Cold Storage to WillScot Mobile Mini, both 2023; and Lincoln International on DeSpir Logistics to C.H. Robinson.

Tenney Group vs Capstone Partners — which is better for selling my trucking company?

Tenney on transportation-only evidence, Capstone on dated evidence, and they are not competing for the same mandate. The Tenney Group, Franklin, Tennessee, since 1973, publishes 33 named tombstones with no dates and is named as sellers' Broker in an SEC-filed April 2019 asset purchase agreement; it holds no broker-dealer registration, which fits asset sales. Capstone Partners publishes six dated tombstones from 2022 to 2026 and a 3PL Market Update dated June 29, 2026, and its footer discloses that its broker-dealer is a subsidiary of Huntington Bancshares.

What multiple will my asset-based carrier sell for, and do buyers pay for my tractors and trailers on top of EBITDA?

Asset-based truckload clears at 4.0x to 6.0x EBITDA on the only sourced range, and the trucks are inside that number. J.P. Morgan set 4.0x to 6.0x on forward EBITDA in the U.S. Xpress proxy of May 2023, against eight named public carriers at 4.0x to 5.9x, and 4.5x to 6.0x on forward EBITDA in the Daseke proxy of February 2024, with the same 4.5x to 6.0x on trailing EBITDA against thirteen precedent transactions. Quoting a multiple and then adding equipment value is the most common owner error. Real estate is the exception: Werner paid $37.8 million for 11 FirstFleet properties under a separate agreement, on top of the roughly $245 million operating price. No source publishes a small-fleet multiple.

Is my freight brokerage valued on net revenue or gross revenue?

On net revenue and EBITDA. RXO's purchase of Coyote Logistics from UPS is the only large brokerage deal that discloses all three units: $1.025 billion for a business with about $3.2 billion of 2023 revenue, about $470 million of gross margin and about $86 million of adjusted EBITDA. Our arithmetic: 0.32x gross revenue, 2.2x gross margin and 11.9x adjusted EBITDA, on a 14.7% gross margin. Knight-Swift paid 0.37x revenue for U.S. Xpress; those two revenue multiples look identical and describe opposite businesses.

Should I sell my warehouse real estate with the business, or do a sale-leaseback?

Decide it before you go to market, because the two structures produce two different EBITDAs for the same building. A sale-leaseback converts owned dirt into rent and the operating company's EBITDA falls by that rent; GXO's offer for Wincanton stated 11.9x pre-synergy on underlying EBITDA on an IAS 17 basis, so the accounting basis moves the denominator by itself. Buyers price the two separately anyway: Schneider paid about $390 million for Cowan Systems and about $31 million for its real estate under separate agreements. Yellow's 130 properties cleared at $1.88 billion to 21 bidders, five of them real-estate investors.

How long does it take to sell a freight brokerage?

Nobody publishes an average for this sector and I will not invent one. What is publishable is the shape: a brokerage runs faster than a carrier because there is no fleet to appraise and no terminal real estate to survey, and both are gated by the same 10-day OP-FC-1 filing before consummation. What stretches the calendar is document readiness rather than buyer interest, a quality-of-earnings surprise, a missing loss run, a contract that needs a customer's consent. Capstone Partners' April 2026 index says diligence timelines have stretched far beyond historical norms.

How do buyers evaluate my CSA scores, insurance loss runs and driver turnover in diligence?

As the price, not as a compliance check. Between 2021 and 2024, ATRI's May 2026 study found liability premiums rose 18.6% to 10.2 cents per mile while heavy-truck crash rates fell 2.6%, with the $10 million to $15 million excess layer up 45% and per-mile liability losses among respondents up 33.1%. A buyer reads three to five years of loss runs before the income statement, and the same study found six safety technologies correlated with lower losses. Driver turnover is priced through seated trucks, and the non-domiciled CDL final rule effective March 16, 2026 narrows the pool.

My freight brokerage has one customer at 40% of revenue — can I still sell it?

Yes, and the record says what it is priced as: a contract that survives, or a discount if it does not. RXO's Coyote release does not rank Coyote's customers, but it states that RXO will continue to serve UPS's brokered transportation needs under a contract that runs through January 2030, so the seller's own volume was underwritten as a signed term. Werner's FirstFleet release led with an average 17-year tenure among its top ten customers. Without a term, buyers price it as escrow, earn-out or a lower multiple, and a change-of-control clause is a consent your buyer needs before closing.

What should the data room look like when the likely bidders are carriers I compete with for the same freight and the same drivers?

One room per bidder, staged tranches, and identity on every rendered page, because your best buyer can poach your drivers and your lanes if the deal dies. For a 150-tractor dedicated carrier running four strategics and two sponsors: a separate Peony data room per bidder so no party sees another's tranche or Q&A; anonymised lane data first; loss runs, CSA history and the equipment list next; the driver roster, customer-level rates and the lane-margin file last. Per-viewer dynamic watermarks trace a leaked rate sheet to the bidder who opened it, Advanced NDA gating holds a countersigned PDF before the room opens, and page-level analytics show which bidder actually read the loss runs. The Data Room plan, $52 per admin per month billed annually with unlimited free viewers, is the tier this needs; Business at $30 covers the teaser stage; a Free tier exists. Peony serves 6,800+ customers and is not an adviser.

What is the typical success fee percentage for selling a $50M trucking company, and what does the whole process cost?

No transportation adviser publishes a rate and no survey I can verify exists, so the only fees on the record are two SEC-filed ones, both J.P. Morgan, both truckload, both far above $50 million. U.S. Xpress agreed to pay 1.50% of the merger consideration, estimated at approximately $12.5 million, of which $3.0 million became payable on delivery of the fairness opinion; Daseke agreed to pay approximately $17.8 million, $5 million of it on the opinion. Roughly 70% to 76% contingent, our arithmetic, and never a middle-market rate. Below that scale the shape is a retainer plus a success fee on one of the Lehman-family scales in our M&A advisor fees guide.

A private equity platform has already offered to buy my brokerage — is an adviser's fee worth it?

Usually, and the record measures the gap in premiums rather than in fee points. Analysts' published price targets for U.S. Xpress were $2.15 to $3.00 a share as of March 14, 2023, and a strategic agreed to pay $6.15 a week later, a 310% premium to the prior close; GXO's contested bid for Wincanton ended 104% above the undisturbed price. A single inbound has no second bidder, and that is what an adviser adds, along with escrow and earn-out terms and closing certainty. The honest counterweight: Werner bought ReedTMS, a $372 million-revenue brokerage, with no adviser named on either side.

Sources

• Werner Enterprises 8-K Exhibit 99.1, January 28, 2026 (FirstFleet), and November 7, 2022 (ReedTMS). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/793074/000079307426000002/wern-8xk20260127exhibit.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/793074/000079307422000060/wern-8xk110522exhibit.htm
• Knight-Swift 8-K Exhibit 99.1, July 30, 2024 (Dependable LTL division), and Exhibit 99, June 1, 2021 (UTXL). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1492691/000149269124000076/knx-exhibit99107302024.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1492691/000149269121000047/knx-exhibit9906012021.htm
• U.S. Xpress DEFM14A, May 24, 2023. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/923571/000110465923064190/tm231775-7_defm14a.htm
• Daseke DEFM14A, February 15, 2024. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1642453/000121390024014633/defm14a0224_daseke.htm
• RXO 8-K Exhibit 99.1, June 24, 2024 (Coyote), and the equity-offering release of September 9, 2024. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1929561/000110465924074147/tm2417822d1_ex99-1.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1929561/000110465924098769/tm2423585d2_ex99-1.htm
• Yellow Corporation 8-K, December 15, 2023. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/716006/000119312523296122/d12936d8k.htm
• Ryder System 8-K Exhibit 99.1, December 13, 2021 (Whiplash). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/85961/000008596121000239/pressreleasewolverine.htm
• Echo Global Logistics 8-K Exhibit 99.1, September 10, 2021, and Forward Air 8-K Exhibit 99.5, August 2023 (Omni). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1426945/000110465921114419/tm2127316d1_ex99-1.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/912728/000119312523211385/d540303dex995.htm
• Adams Resources & Energy 8-K Exhibit 10.1, asset purchase agreement dated April 10, 2019, section 6.1. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2178/000000217819000015/a2q20198-kexhibit101.htm
• UPS Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, Notes 18 and 19. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1090727/000162828025049661/ups-20250930.htm
• FedEx 8-K filed June 1, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1048911/000110465926068519/tm2616055d1_8k.htm
• Covenant Logistics 8-K Exhibit 99.1, February 10, 2022. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/928658/000100888622000013/exhibit991.htm
• 49 CFR Part 365 subpart D, sections 365.401T to 365.405T, current as of September 1, 2026; suspension at 88 FR 80179, November 17, 2023; 49 CFR 360.3T; 49 CFR 387.307. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-III/subchapter-B/part-365
• 49 U.S.C. § 14303. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/14303
• Cass Transportation Index Report, August 2026, authored by ACT Research; ATA Truck Tonnage Index released August 18, 2026. https://www.cassinfo.com/freight-audit-payment/cass-transportation-indexes
• ATRI, "An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking," July 15, 2026, and its truck-insurance study, May 19, 2026. https://truckingresearch.org/
• Federal Register: 91 FR 7044 (non-domiciled CDL final rule), 91 FR 51422 (English-proficiency proposal, pending), 90 FR 48451 (Section 232 medium- and heavy-duty vehicle proclamation, effective November 1, 2025).
• Read on EDGAR, September 2026: Schneider National 8-K Exhibit 99.1, November 25, 2024 (Cowan Systems); Daseke 8-K Exhibit 99.1, December 22, 2023; USA Truck 8-K Exhibit 99.1, June 24, 2022; GXO 8-K Exhibit 2.1, February 29, 2024 (Rule 2.7 announcement) and Exhibit 99.1, March 14, 2024 (scheme document); XPO 8-K, December 5, 2023, and 8-K Exhibit 99.1, February 7, 2024 (Q4 2023 presentation); Saia 8-K Exhibit 99.1, December 5, 2023.
• Armstrong & Associates, US 3PL market size and segment definitions, 2025; Capstone Partners, Middle Market M&A Valuations Index, April 2026; FTR Transportation Intelligence, Class 8 order commentary, August 2026.
• Firm websites and the SEC adviser-info firm database for CRD numbers, read September 15, 2026.

About the author: Sean Yu is the co-founder of Peony, the data room platform used by 6,800+ customers across M&A, fundraising, and private-deal workflows. He works on the access-control and analytics layer that decides who is allowed to read a confidential document. Peony is not an M&A advisor; it is the confidential room a deal process runs in. Contact: hello@peony.ink.