A stock buyback program that was launched in December 1997 was suspended in April 1999 as a result of the then-pending Jevic acquisition and internal capital investment opportunities. The program resulted in the purchase of 3.8 million shares since its inception, for a 13 percent reduction in shares outstanding. Today, we have approximately 24.9 million shares outstanding.

National Operations

Yellow Freight System is growing again after the 1998 speed bump associated with customer anxiety over the Teamster contract renewal. It finished the year with revenue of $2.6 billion, up from $2.5 billion in 1998. Operating income was $85.4 million, an increase of 27.7 percent over 1998 and the best bottom line performance since 1990. The 1999 operating ratio for Yellow Freight was 96.7, versus 97.3 in 1998.

The business trends were strong and accelerated steadily throughout the year. By the fourth quarter, our LTL tonnage was 6.3 percent greater than the fourth quarter of 1998. Shipments in the same quarter were running nearly 4 percent heavier than 12 months earlier. Our unit revenue expressed as revenue per shipment was 5 percent higher. These were encouraging trends that we believe bode well for the year 2000.

Yellow Freight is pursuing a vision of providing guaranteed, time-definite, defect-free, hassle-free transportation and related global services to businesses throughout North America. In 1999,Yellow Freight took a big step toward making that vision a reality by completing the rollout of a three-tier service portfolio that provides varying levels of precision and value, depending on customer need. Those services - Standard Ground, Definite Delivery and Exact Express - are proving to be just what customers want.

Standard Ground ^TM provides customers with the broadest coverage and most competitive service standards of any of our competitors.

Definite Delivery^TM, our mid-tier ground service introduced in 1999, offers customers the reassurance of 24-by-7 monitoring, proactive notification if there are problems and a money back guarantee. It is positioned to meet demand for movement of goods and materials that must arrive at destination on time.