This article was created with the assistance of AI using the video transcript from the video linked below. If you want the original content, visit my Youtube channel.
I ranked six of the biggest logistics companies in Canada from S to E: CN Rail, CPKC, TFI International, Mullen Group, Westshore Terminals and Cargojet. It’s one stock per tier, so somebody has to land in E. This is a timely group to look at. After a very long stretch of lagging performance, a lot of these companies are starting to see volumes pick up again, and the popularity is coming back with it.
Four Very Different Ways to Ship Goods
Other than the two railways, every company on this list is in a different line of business. Mullen and TFI are both trucking companies, but they truck different things. Westshore is a port terminal and Cargojet is an airline. These are four very different ways to ship goods and four very different ways to make money.
| Railways (CN, CPKC) | Trucking (TFI, Mullen) | Port Terminal (Westshore) | Air Cargo (Cargojet) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing power | High | Low | Medium (contracts) | Medium |
| Competition | Mostly each other | Thousands of carriers | A few competitors | Very little |
| Big costs | Track, crews, fuel | Drivers, fuel, trucks | Port lease, staff | Old planes, maintenance |
| What hurts it | Trade slowdowns | A weak economy | Weak coal demand, fewer customers | Losing a big customer |
The railways compete with trucks and US lines, but in Canada the real competition is with each other. Trucking has thousands of carriers, which is why its pricing power is so low. Cargojet has almost no competition because foreign airlines can’t fly cargo between Canadian cities unless they’re majority Canadian owned. All of these are capital-intensive businesses.
What Is an Operating Ratio?
You’ll see this number a lot for the railways and truckers. The operating ratio is operating costs divided by revenue. It’s the opposite of operating margin, so lower is better. A 61% operating ratio means CN Rail spends about 61 cents in expenses for every dollar of revenue it brings in.
The railways run around 60%. The best US trucker, Old Dominion, ran 75% in 2025. TFI’s US less-than-truckload business is around 97%.
CN Rail (TSX: CNR): B Tier
Railways have had a very good year. CN is up about 29% so far in 2026. It has close to 20,000 miles of track reaching three coasts: the Pacific in Vancouver and Prince Rupert, the Atlantic in Montreal and Halifax, and the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans and Mobile. Its biggest customer is under 3% of freight revenue.
That’s one thing I like about the railways: they have a huge number of customers. The trucking companies are diverse too, but many lean heavily on consumer activity and big shippers like Amazon. The railways depend on the consumer as well, but they also ship a lot of essential goods. Grain, for example, hit record highs this year.
CN yields 2.1%, runs a 61% operating ratio and trades at about 14.7x EV/EBITDA. Even after the big rise in price, the railways are still fairly attractive.
In 2025, 37% of CN’s revenue went overseas through ports, 29% crossed the Canada-US border, 18% stayed in Canada and 16% stayed in the US. Most of its business goes through ports, which isn’t surprising for a coast-to-coast railway. Its freight is also balanced. Intermodal containers are 22% of revenue, grain and fertilizer 21%, and petroleum and chemicals 20%, with metals, forest products, coal and autos making up the rest. No group is more than a quarter of revenue, so when autos are weak, something like intermodal can pick up the slack.
Volumes Have Gone Nowhere
This isn’t just a CN problem, it’s every railway. There was a freight boom during the COVID lockdowns that was never going to last, mostly in trucking and air cargo. People were eventually going to leave their houses, interest rates were eventually going to rise and people were going to spend less. Rail volumes went nowhere through all of it. CN’s 2025 freight volume was 4% below 2018.
That said, volumes are now increasing. In the third quarter of 2026, CN grew revenue 15% on 4% more freight. Pricing power, fuel surcharges and the exchange rate made up the rest. The railways are clearly turning things around.
In July 2026, CN agreed to stop opposing the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger in exchange for rights to run trains from Memphis to the Mexican border. That merger is still going through regulatory approval, but CN used it to get a better path into Mexico.
Capital Allocation
This is my biggest problem with CN. Its debt more than doubled, from C$10.4 billion in 2015 to C$22.8 billion by September 2026.
From 2015 to 2025, CN paid out C$44.6 billion in dividends and buybacks, against C$33.8 billion of free cash flow. That’s 132% of the cash it made, while debt rose substantially.
I held CN for over a decade, but I ended up selling it because I felt it spent capital poorly during the peak freight environment. It bought back a ton of shares at peak prices and raised the dividend a lot, when it probably should have been paying down debt in the best environment it was ever going to get.
Railways vs the TSX
The railways underperformed the TSX for three straight years, 2023, 2024 and 2025, which you just don’t see. I built an equal-weight portfolio of CN and CPKC, rebalanced each January with dividends reinvested, and compared it with the TSX’s total return every year back to 2002, when CP first traded as a standalone railway. 2023 to 2025 is the only three-year losing run in that whole period. The longest before it was two years, in 2015 and 2016. The gap in 2025 was 35 percentage points.
They’ve had a big rebound in 2026, up about 32% so far against about 15% for the TSX.
On my valuation zone chart at Stocktrades Premium, CN sits right in the middle of fair value. I’d consider it expensive above about C$191, and at around C$178 I wouldn’t object to anybody paying this price. It was cheap at the start of the year. It isn’t anymore, but it isn’t expensive either.
Bull case: It owns the only railway into Prince Rupert and reaches three coasts. Nobody is building a competing transcontinental line, because the cost of replicating this track, with all the bridges and tunnels, would be enormous. There has been no dividend cut in about 30 years. In the 2020 downturn, adjusted earnings fell 8% and reported earnings 14%, and CN kept the dividend. It trades near its normal valuation at about 22x trailing earnings.
Bear case: Adjusted earnings per share grew under 1% a year from 2022 to 2025. Freight volumes are still below 2018. Dividends and buybacks ran ahead of free cash flow. And its train crew contract expires December 31, 2026, a year before CPKC’s. The railways have dealt with a lot of strikes lately, so expect labour costs to go up, although the railways have the pricing power to offset that.
The moat and the pricing power automatically put CN near the top. But I don’t feel its management is the best in this space, and I believe CPKC’s is far superior. CN goes in B tier. It’s an outstanding railway, but poor capital allocation decisions over the last few years have soured my opinion on it. If anybody bought it today, would I object? Absolutely not. I just think there are more attractive, better-run logistics companies in Canada today.
Cargojet (TSX: CJT): C Tier
I owned Cargojet not too long ago. I think it has a lot of promise if economic activity picks up, especially shipments from China. I sold it because I found a better opportunity, adding to my Shopify position during its big drawdown, but I still think it has a fair amount of upside from here.
It’s a small-cap company, about C$1.4 billion, with an outstanding moat. Foreign airlines can’t fly cargo between Canadian cities. You need to be majority Canadian owned, and that’s exactly why Amazon hasn’t started its own air shipping here. It signs long-term agreements with Cargojet instead. There was speculation that Canada might loosen these rules in tariff negotiations, but I don’t think that happens. And even if the rules changed, would Amazon, UPS or DHL enter the market? Canada isn’t nearly as big as the US, and it’s very easy to just sign a contract with Cargojet.
Cargojet carries about 90% of Canada’s overnight domestic air cargo. It’s up about 13% this year with a 1.6% dividend yield, and it’s 61% below its 2020 high.
That high came from shipping demand during the COVID lockdowns, when we were all sitting in our homes. Don’t anchor yourself to that price. Could it ever get there again? Yes, but probably slower than you’d imagine. The chart looks like a poor company, but it was really an unsustainable environment. At about 6.8x EV/EBITDA, it’s cheap, priced for the current macro environment.
How Cargojet Makes Money
In 2025, 43% of revenue came from the domestic network, 24% from planes for hire, 18% from charters, and 15% from fuel and other items.
- Domestic network (43%): many customers share space on the same nightly flights. Most buy guaranteed space whether they fill it or not, a bit like a take-or-pay contract with a pipeline, and about 75% of domestic volume is under long-term contracts. Revenue grew about 8.5% a year from 2017 to 2025. This isn’t a fast grower, but it trades at very high valuations at the peaks and very low ones in downturns.
- Planes for hire (24%): this is called ACMI, for aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. Cargojet supplies the plane and the crew, maintains and insures it, and the customer pays a fee. DHL is contracted to 2033. This segment fell 18% in 2025 as routes got shorter and tariff uncertainty made companies hesitant to sign contracts.
- Charters (18%): whole planes for hire, including livestock, military gear and a China-Canada service that was up 31% in the first half of 2026.
Three customers make up 53% of revenue: Canada Post, Amazon and DHL. Amazon’s contract runs to 2029 with an option to 2031.
Balance Sheet and Buybacks
Net debt is C$872 million including leases, about 2.6x EBITDA and falling, and it has an investment-grade credit rating. I’d like to see the balance sheet improve a bit, but nothing here concerns me much.
I like how Cargojet has handled its stock. It sold shares at C$213 in 2021, at the peak, and by my calculation it has bought back shares at an average of about C$106 since 2023, half the price it issued at. That’s the complete opposite of what CN did. The dividend has grown roughly 10% a year over the past decade, but the yield is small, and if the environment got bad enough I have no doubt it would be cut. This isn’t a company that’s dead set on its dividend.
Bull case: A moat protected by rules that keep foreign airlines off Canadian domestic routes, about 90% of overnight air cargo, and a cheap valuation. At 6.8x EV/EBITDA it’s well below the 10.6x to 15.3x it traded at from 2016 to 2021. I wouldn’t put weight on the 15.3x, but the lowest it had been before now was 10.6x. And it’s been smart with its stock.
Bear case: It’s cyclical. This isn’t a buy-and-forget stock. You would have had to sell in the 2021 freight peak to get any reasonable return, and it has trailed the index, up about 140% over ten years with dividends reinvested. You need to buy near economic lows and sell near peaks, which is much harder than it sounds. Its planes are old and getting more expensive to maintain. Free cash flow was deep in the red last year from maintenance, and earnings have roughly halved since 2022.
Then there’s customer concentration, and Canada Post is the big one. Canada Post is going through large-scale difficulties because people just don’t use it as much. I don’t think that contract ever goes away, but it could get renegotiated lower. I see that as a five-plus-year headwind, not something that hurts this cycle.
I really like this business, and I like Cargojet at this point in time. But it’s up against some Goliaths here, and I can’t put it any higher. Cargojet goes in C tier.
Mullen Group (TSX: MTL): D Tier
Mullen is the first of the trucking companies. It’s an Okotoks, Alberta company, not too far from me, and it owns 44 separately run trucking, logistics, warehousing, customs brokerage and oilfield service businesses, mostly in Western Canada and Ontario.
The stock has gone pretty much straight up after trading flat for a very long time, up 83% this year, mostly because of its oilfield exposure. At about C$2.8 billion it’s become more of a mid cap, but in a downturn I’d expect it to go back to small-cap status. It yields about 3%, and it trades at about 9.7x EV/EBITDA. That’s expensive compared with the roughly 7.5x this cyclical trucker has usually traded at over the past five years.
The dividend record isn’t good. It has been cut three times, in 2009, 2016 and 2020. With the oilfield and trucking businesses this volatile, I think Mullen should just pay a base dividend and add special dividends when the environment is better.
The Business
In 2025, 36% of revenue was less-than-truckload, 35% logistics and warehousing, 19% specialized and industrial, and about 10% from a small US segment.
- Less-than-truckload: 12 businesses serving about 5,500 communities, mostly in central and western Canada. Compared with TFI, which has a lot of US and Canada-wide exposure, this is a very concentrated play on Western Canada.
- Logistics and warehousing: truckload shipping, warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment and customs brokerage.
- Specialized and industrial: the oilfield side, including water management, fluid hauling and pipeline logistics.
Mullen’s strategy is to buy private trucking companies from their founders, let them keep their names and managers, and run everything with a very small head office. It’s an acquisition-heavy company, mostly small tuck-ins.
The balance sheet is reasonable. Mullen has about C$800 million of notes at a 6.1% weighted average interest rate. That’s fairly high, which isn’t surprising for a smaller trucking company, but the rates are fixed until 2034 and 2037. That’s better than variable-rate debt. Look at what happened to Algonquin Power when it had to slash its dividend. It also has a lot of untapped credit, and 2.2x EBITDA isn’t a bad leverage ratio for a company like this.
Bull case: The fixed-rate debt makes costs more predictable in a cyclical industry, while more indebted rivals deal with higher or floating rates. It’s a proven buyer of small companies, with nearly 90 deals and owned real estate behind it. It’s posting record quarters and its best oilfield margins in years.
Bear case: It’s a 12-year round trip. The stock is still below its 2014 high of C$31.13, set just before the oil market imploded. That was likely an unsustainable environment, and I don’t think we’re there now, but it shows how these companies can go flat for a very long time when things turn sour.
A higher multiple did a lot of this year’s work, not just operating results, and multiple expansion is never great for a cyclical company. Add the repeated dividend cuts.
On my valuation zone chart at Stocktrades Premium, Mullen is very expensive. It was cheap for a long time during the weaker oil environment, declined from 2017 to 2020, then got the pickup almost every trucker got coming out of the pandemic. Anything above about C$20 a share looks expensive to me, and it’s close to C$29. If the environment slows down at all, that’s not good for the share price. The rest of its grades at Premium are good. It’s a very well-run company. It’s just too expensive.
Mullen goes in D tier. It’s more cyclical, and I just can’t see myself putting it above a better-run trucking company that comes later on this list.
Westshore Terminals (TSX: WTE): E Tier
I’ll admit I didn’t know much about Westshore before this. It’s relatively unknown, so I had to do a lot of digging, but it has had some crazy good results lately.
Westshore has effectively one asset: the coal export terminal at Roberts Bank, south of Vancouver, the largest coal loading terminal on the west coast of the Americas. It never owns the coal. It charges miners a fee per tonne to unload their trains and load ships, mostly bound for Japan and South Korea.
The other thing I didn’t know is that it’s owned by the Jim Pattison Group, which owns Save-On-Foods. Pattison owns about 47% of the company.
It’s a C$2.7 billion company, up about 66% this year. Six months ago it would have been a small cap. The dividend yield is in the mid-3% range, it trades at about 23x earnings against a five-year median of 17x, and its 2026 guidance is 27 million tonnes.
On my valuation zone chart at Stocktrades Premium, I’d put fair value around C$37, and it’s around C$47. Every time this stock has gotten into the expensive zone over the past ten years, it has had a sharp correction. The chart can’t predict the future, and macro factors drive a company like this heavily, but I’ll be interested to see where it goes.
How Westshore Makes Money
Revenue is basically tonnes loaded times a fee per tonne. A significant share of costs is fixed, so extra tonnes add a lot to profit. In 2025, Westshore loaded 23.6 million tonnes at an average of C$13.05. In the third quarter of 2026 alone it loaded about 7 million tonnes at C$14.39, helped by a coal price spike.
About 72% of 2026 tonnes so far is thermal coal, which is burned for electricity. The rest is steelmaking coal. The four biggest customers were 98% of 2025 volume. This is effectively America’s coal port: about 61% of the thermal coal Canada exported in 2025 was mined in the US and railed in. Japan took 45% of 2025 tonnes and South Korea 27%. We don’t burn much coal here, so it depends on other countries.
Potash comes next. BHP is paying to build a potash terminal on Westshore’s site and has prepaid C$913 million. Westshore covers about C$250 million of cost overruns, and the terminal should start in 2027.
As of the most recent quarter, Westshore has no bank debt, C$126 million in cash and a C$165 million undrawn credit line it may use for those overruns. The dividend was cut 52% in late 2015 and rebuilt to C$1.50 a year, with special dividends on top. I think that’s the right way for a business like this to do it. Keep the base dividend low as a small share of free cash flow and pay specials, so you never have to cut in a cyclical, declining industry.
Bull case: A one-of-a-kind terminal with a port lease to 2051 (Westshore leases the land from the port authority). No bank debt. Potash adds a second, longer-lived product with a customer as big as BHP. And a new 10-year Glencore steelmaking coal agreement from 2028 for 10 million tonnes a year, reducible to 7 million, locks in that customer for a decade.
Bear case: Four customers are 98% of volume, and most of it is thermal coal, which countries are trying to phase out. Will they? Japan and South Korea certainly aren’t slowing down yet, but I’m not bullish on coal for the long term. Earnings haven’t grown: C$1.47 a share in 2025 versus C$1.62 in 2016. Yet it trades at about 23x earnings against a five-year median of 17x, and 18.3x EV/EBITDA against a median of 10.9x. Part of this year’s gain came alongside a coal price spike, and because costs are fixed, that spike flows straight to profit.
Westshore goes in E tier, with a caveat. I know five of these six businesses very well, but with Westshore I was starting from scratch. I spent a few hours on it, and when I make these lists I’m not saying the bottom companies are weak. I just couldn’t find a reason to buy Westshore over any of the other five. If you see something I don’t, let me know. You might know the space a lot better than I do.
CPKC (TSX: CP): S Tier
Canadian Pacific bought Kansas City Southern for about US$31 billion, in a process that ran from 2021 to 2023 and included beating CN in a bidding war. If you think of CN as the east-to-west railway, think of CPKC as the north-to-south railway.
It’s the only single railway running from Vancouver and Montreal through Chicago and Kansas City to Mexico City. You can take a rail car from Canada all the way to Mexico without swapping trains. It never changes hands. CN has no track in Mexico, and Union Pacific has none in Canada or Mexico, so they have to hand a car off to another railway along the way. That adds to CPKC’s pricing power, and it’s already seeing a lot of synergies from its Mexico exposure.
There was a lot of share dilution in the deal, and 2025 return on invested capital was only about 6.9%, against the 14% to 15% it earned a decade ago. I believe that recovers.
CPKC is about a C$113 billion company, up about 29% this year, and it has virtually no dividend (0.8%). CPKC doesn’t care about being a dividend aristocrat. It grows the dividend when times are good and stops when they’re not. It focuses on the best place to allocate capital, which is why I’m a massive fan of this company and why I own it.
Debt is 3.2x EBITDA, higher than CN, but the acquisition plays a part. It trades at about 17.9x EV/EBITDA. On my valuation zone chart at Stocktrades Premium, it’s right in the middle of fair value at around C$132, and I don’t think it gets expensive until about C$185. It was very attractive for a long time and is just past the cusp of what I’d call cheap.
A Trade Railway
In 2025, 48% of revenue came from Canada, 34% from the US and 18% from Mexico. I expect Mexico and the US to grow. CN has much more port exposure, and that’s the east-west versus north-south difference.
About 41% of CPKC’s freight revenue crosses a border, the most of any company on this list. Canada to the US is 15%, the US to Mexico 12%, the US to Canada 6% and Mexico to the US 5%. Another 26% is overseas trade, so only 33% stays inside one country.
That means trade tensions can hurt it. But with exposure to all three countries, it could also benefit if US companies bought more US goods because of tariffs on Canada. It’s very well positioned overall.
CPKC is also fighting the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger, asking US regulators to block a deal that would create a coast-to-coast rival. A decision is expected in 2027, and it would hurt CPKC more than CN.
The Better Capital Allocator
CPKC has bought back about C$7.45 billion of stock since March 2025, while its debt rose C$2.66 billion in 2026. The dividend is small by design.
Here’s the chart I’ve shown over a long stretch of videos. During the peak freight environment, CN spent C$13.6 billion on buybacks and dividends in 2022 and 2023. CPKC kept its dividend steady and cut buybacks to zero. Then, when railway valuations got substantially lower in 2025, it started spending. That’s what you want from a strong capital allocator, not a company putting out headlines about buybacks and dividend raises.
It shows in the results over the last decade.
Bull case: The only Canada-US-Mexico network, and it can’t be copied. A shipment from Saskatchewan to Mexico never changes hands. Its volumes grew faster than CN’s this year: 6% more freight in the third quarter against CN’s 4%. Its 59.9% core adjusted operating ratio in 2025 is among the best in North American rail. Union Pacific is slightly better, but CPKC keeps improving as it integrates Kansas City Southern. And it trades below its five-year median at 17.9x EV/EBITDA versus 18.9x, so I think it’s fairly valued even after a 30% run.
Bear case: It’s the more exposed of the two railways to tariffs and the CUSMA review, with 41% of freight revenue crossing a border. If the three countries reach an agreement, that headwind quickly becomes a tailwind. Earnings growth slowed from 11.8% a year (2015 to 2020) to 5.5% (2020 to 2025) because of all the shares issued for KCS. And it will likely come in at the low end of its guidance, which I don’t blame it for, because diesel has gone through the roof. It can surcharge for fuel, but surcharges lag.
There’s also a quirk of the operating ratio. Expenses are smaller than revenue, so if you add the exact same dollar amount of diesel cost to expenses as you add in surcharges to revenue, the operating ratio still goes up. Per C$100 of revenue at a 60% operating ratio, adding C$5 of diesel and C$5 of surcharge takes it to 61.9%, even though operating profit doesn’t change.
It’s also buying back shares while its debt sits above its own target. The only reasoning I can think of is that it believes the buybacks will earn more than the interest it’s paying on the debt it takes on to fund them. I’m trusting it on this, and so far it has turned out to be true. I’d still prefer the debt get paid down, but that’s a small nitpick.
CPKC goes in S tier. I believe it’s the best-run logistics company in North America. You could argue Union Pacific is a slightly better operated railway, but CPKC has the better growth prospects, I think it can get its operating ratio in lockstep with Union Pacific, and it has that interconnected railway across all three countries.
TFI International (TSX: TFII): A Tier
TFI is no slouch. This was a very close race. If TFI were even marginally cheaper on valuation, I probably would have put it ahead of CPKC. That says a lot, because trucking companies are typically much weaker operators than railways on operating ratios and margins, and I still prefer TFI to CN.
It has the best ten-year compound on this list. If you invested C$1,000 ten years ago and reinvested the dividends, you’d have about 5.25x your money. It picked up during the COVID freight peak and kept going.
During the last terrible trucking environment, TFI bought logistics companies for pennies on the dollar while many were going broke. It had the balance sheet to survive and used it. Its best acquisition by a country mile was the old UPS Freight network in 2021. It has made over 214 acquisitions since 1996, though fewer recently as it has been more conservative with the balance sheet.
TFI is about an C$11 billion company, down 6% this year, with a 2% dividend yield. Its US less-than-truckload operating ratio is about 97%. Compare that with CPKC, which spends under 60 cents for every dollar of revenue. TFI’s US LTL spends about 97 cents. It needs to improve that, and it’s why the share price has struggled. It trades at about 8.8x EV/EBITDA, cheaper than usual.
The Business
Less-than-truckload is 41% of revenue, mostly from the UPS Freight purchase. Truckload is 39% and logistics 20%.
- Less-than-truckload: many customers’ pallets share one truck and get sorted at terminals. It needs a very dense network that’s very hard to copy. Brands include TForce, Canpar, Loomis, TST Overland and others.
- Truckload: one customer fills the whole trailer, mostly specialized work like flatbeds, tanks, heavy haul and dedicated fleets. Truckload operating income rose 91% last year as US trucking capacity shrank.
- Logistics: a very asset-light freight brokerage. It books a truck it doesn’t own and keeps a cut, plus last-mile delivery and driving new trucks from factories to dealers. There could be some AI disruption risk here, but we aren’t seeing anything yet.
These are really two very different businesses. In 2025, Canadian LTL made about US$175 million of operating income on US$954 million of revenue. US LTL made about US$82 million on US$1.68 billion, so about US$750 million more revenue with less than half the operating income.
The balance sheet is fine. Net debt is about US$2.8 billion including leases, 2.3x EBITDA and falling, against US$832 million of free cash flow in 2025. TFI raised its dividend every year from December 2016 to December 2025, and no increase had been announced as of November 9, 2026. It has the room, so I’d be surprised if it doesn’t raise. If it doesn’t, that would tell me it expects trucking to get much worse. Its only real dividend cut was in the financial crisis, when it converted its share structure. And its share count is down 18% since 2015.
Bull case: The best-returning company on this list, and I believe the best-operated. In my opinion it’s in lockstep with CPKC, it just doesn’t have the pricing power, and its competition is much fiercer. Management knows the industry very well and has taken advantage of pretty much every crisis in trucking. If the environment stays soft, I expect it to keep doing that. At 8.8x EV/EBITDA it’s about half of Old Dominion’s 17.9x, and I don’t know why that gap is so large.
Here’s the main bull case, and I think a lot of people understate it. On its 2025 revenue base, taking US LTL from a 97% to a 90% operating ratio would add about US$120 million of operating profit before other changes. If one of the better-managed logistics companies fixes its US LTL business, there’s a lot of room for a higher valuation. It sits in A tier because I believe it can turn this around.
Bear case: US LTL has deteriorated since 2022. Its operating ratio was 89.9% in 2022, when truckers could charge almost whatever they wanted, rose to 95.1% in 2025 and is about 97% now. I don’t think it gets back under 90, but the low 90s is a reasonable assumption, and that would put upward pressure on the share price. US LTL shipments are down 26% since 2022 and the US industrial economy is still weak. TFI no longer discloses its Canada and US results separately, and it’s mostly a US operator now. It wanted to move its headquarters to the US but backed off after pushback from Canadian pension funds.
TFI goes in A tier. It’s a trucking company navigating a very soft trucking environment very well, and when freight eventually improves, this is one of the best management teams to reap the benefits.
The Final Board
| Stock | Ticker | What It Does | 2026 Price Change | Dividend Yield | EV/EBITDA | C$1,000, 10 Years, Dividends In | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPKC | CP | Railway, Canada-US-Mexico | +29% | 0.8% | 17.9x | C$3,702 | S |
| TFI International | TFII | Trucking | -6% | 2.0% | 8.8x | C$5,259 | A |
| CN Rail | CNR | Railway, three coasts | +29% | 2.1% | 14.7x | C$2,522 | B |
| Cargojet | CJT | Overnight air cargo | +13% | 1.6% | 6.8x | C$2,420 | C |
| Mullen Group | MTL | Trucking, logistics, oilfield | +83% | 2.9% | 9.7x | C$2,444 | D |
| Westshore Terminals | WTE | Coal port, potash from 2027 | +66% | 3.5% | 18.3x | C$2,752 | E |
CPKC is what I’d call the second-best operated railway in North America next to Union Pacific, but the one with the most growth, so I prefer it. TFI is the best trucking company in North America in my opinion. CN has an impenetrable moat and a very long dividend growth streak, but some questionable management decisions caused me to dock it, and to sell my shares and buy CPKC about two years ago. Cargojet has potential if the air cargo, e-commerce and China trade picture improves. Mullen is a very high-quality trucking company, but it’s more boom and bust, and I have a hard time buying it over TFI. Westshore was new to me. I’m not bullish on its coal exposure, but the potash expansion is very interesting if it keeps building that out.
