Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Analyst for Matthew Troy – Citigroup.
Analyst for Matthew Troy - Citigroup
You talked a little bit about sequential narrowing in the margin contribution, to your net revenue line during the quarter, with that recently turning negative. Can you talk a little more to that as to how that looks into an upturn and is this mostly a function of tougher comps or is it tougher pricing from the carrier or is a little bit of both?
John Wiehoff
We have talked a lot this year about kind of how our model typically works and I think what we saw during the third quarter was what we would expect as volumes start to improve a little bit, that our cost of hire increased or started to compare a little bit more aggressively sequentially as it increased, while our prices to the customers were staying fairly flat for the last five or six months. So it's not uncommon for us that when volumes start to improve that we will start to see some margin compression on a per-transaction basis.
So as volume improved and was flat for the third quarter and actually has increased for the first couple of weeks of October, we do see some margin compression, which again, for us that would be a normal expectation for this part of the cycle. What's difficult to tell is if that increase in volume is short term or a longer term trend or what will happen in the rest of October or the rest of the fourth quarter, but we do know that there is also, from a comparability standpoint, last fourth quarter volumes dropped each month and margins expanded as demand really softened.
Analyst for Matthew Troy - Citigroup
So as far as the volume trends in the quarter, can you give a little better color on that for us as well?
Chad Lindbloom
During the quarter, July, August, and September, they were on a per-business-day basis. Our truckload volumes were down a little bit in July and roughly flat in August and September, compared to 2008's same months.
Analyst for Matthew Troy - Citigroup
And into the first few weeks of October?
John Wiehoff
It's hard to tell into October because we look at per business day and there's one less business day, but kind of low- to mid-single digits. It jumps around each day. It's too early in the month to tell what it will project to.
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