Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Tom Wadewitz, JP Morgan. Please go ahead, sir.
Tom Wadewitz – JP Morgan
Yes, good afternoon.
Mike Uremovich
Hi, Tom.
Tom Wadewitz – JP Morgan
One – I guess one just clarification, first, before I get into more questions. On the earnings guidance – so essentially you including the $0.10 tax benefit now, but keeping a range, so effectively taking the range down to $0.10, is that (inaudible) the tax benefit. Is that the right way to read that, or am I interpreting that incorrectly?
Mike Uremovich
That's the right way to read that.
Tom Wadewitz – JP Morgan
Okay. What's the key driver in that? Is it just the way fuel has played out or – and that you're going to get – or it sounds like you'll get headwind from fuel in fourth quarter. Or is that more your concern that volumes would fall off sharply in the fourth quarter given the weakening in demand?
Mike Uremovich
It's a combination of both, Tom. And it's probably about 50-50 frankly. We have a problem with rapidly declining fuel, and yet we're going to be – we're going to have a fuel adjustment from the third quarter that was much higher. But I will tell you that volumes have softened depreciably. And we get such week-to-week variations that it's very, very difficult to build a prediction or a trend on what's going to happen to the rest of the year. So, I guess the direct response would be it's about evenly split.
Tom Wadewitz – JP Morgan
About evenly split? Okay. In terms of giving us a framework for thinking about the fuel impact in the quarter, from an earnings perspective year-over-year, do you think fuel was a greater impact in first quarter? Second quarter? Third? Was it kind of comparable across the three? Or if you look at with that kind of a framework, what – how would you characterize the fuel impact to earnings?
Mike Uremovich
We indicated in several of our earlier calls this year that there would be a lapping problem in the fourth quarter of '08 compared to '07 because of the behavior of fuel, and that's still the case. We just – I just don't know what it is. Brian, if you want to add anything to that --
Brian Kane
Just in terms of the fuel surcharge percentage, the biggest ramp up occurred in the first quarter, the second quarter of this year. The ramp up between the second quarter and the third quarter wasn't quite as great. So sort of consisting a little bit better in the third quarter than it was in the second.
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