TacticScaleWhat Heartland Express Does & How It Makes Money (HTLD)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Heartland Express's latest reported financials
U.S. truckload carrier hauling freight across North America. The company earns freight revenue by charging shippers to move full truckloads with its own trucks and trailers.
How Heartland Express makes money
The company earns freight revenue by charging shippers to move full truckloads with its own trucks and trailers. Its customers are mainly retailers, manufacturers, and parcel carriers.
What Heartland Express does
Heartland Express, Inc., founded in 1978 and headquartered in North Liberty, Iowa, is an asset-based truckload carrier. It uses its own fleet to provide short, medium, and long-haul freight service across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Its main business is nationwide dry van truckload service. It also handles cross-border freight and temperature-controlled loads. The company operates under the Heartland Express, Millis Transfer, Smith Transport, and CFI brand names. Its customers are mainly retailers, manufacturers, and parcel carriers, and the freight it carries includes consumer goods, appliances, food products, and automotive goods. Because it hauls consumer and industrial goods, its business tends to follow overall freight demand in North America.
Products & services
- Dry van truckload services
- Temperature-controlled truckload services
- Cross-border freight (U.S.-Mexico-Canada)
- Heartland Express brand
- Millis Transfer, Smith Transport and CFI brands
What is Heartland Express worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, Heartland Express's most-likely value is about $1 versus a recent price near $11 (90% above fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$1) with a margin of safety — so the honest verdict here is “Stretched — richly priced.” Fair value earns its keep only at the extremes, not in the wide middle.
Today's $11 is above even the optimistic Bull case ($1) — the market expects faster, longer growth than modeled here. Expensive unless that extra growth actually shows up.
⚠ High leverage — net debt is 16.2× annual cash flow. Net debt is subtracted from this fair value, but refinancing at higher rates, principal timing, and share dilution aren’t modeled — the equity can be worth far less if cash flow weakens.
Analysis, not advice. Fair value is a margin-of-safety estimate from a deterministic owner-earnings DCF, not a price target or recommendation. See the full breakdown →
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