Near zero chance Knight-Swift, U.S. Xpress deal is a monopoly
Summary
Four years later the now-combined Knight-Swift acquired Dothan, Alabama-based less-than-truckload carrier AAA Cooper Transportation (no. While the Knight-Swift and its soon-to-be 25,000 truckload tractors will be a giant of the highways, it makes up only a fraction – less than 1% – of the more than 4 million Class 8 trucks registered in the U.S. "There is near zero – and I mean close to absolute zero – chance this deal would be stopped due to monopoly concerns," said Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management and interim chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State Universitys Broad College of Business. While the carrier that comes through the other side once the deal closes later this year will be of significant size, Donald Broughton, managing partner and principal at Broughton Capital, LLC, said the Knight-Swift-U.S. Xpress conglomerate still wouldnt be big enough to dictate market pricing, "and therefore it fails one of the foremost basic tests of Is this approaching monopolistic?" That trucking serves multiple segments and industries, each in different geographies with different customers, Peter Stefanovich, president of supply chain merger and acquisitions experts Left Lane Associates, said its unrealistic to think regulators would kill the deal on the grounds of it creating a monopoly. "Instead, my two takeaways from the merger are: it’s a great opportunity to achieve economies of scale and strengthen their coverage for Knight-Swift; and I think we will continue to see consolidation in the industry.