With all the doom and gloom hanging over the trucking industry these days, it may come as a surprise to learn that many trucking stocks are darlings on Wall Street.

In a Sunday piece, The New York Times noted that the Bloomberg U.S. Trucking index bottomed in March 2000, but since then, it is up 37 percent.
Gary Yablon, a transportation analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston, told the paper that while high fuel prices have hurt income statements, many trucking companies have been able to pass on the increases to their customers.
Yablon notes that the last couple of years have been hard on the trucking industry, with the slow economy, high fuel prices, rising insurance costs and a used truck glut. "Many people are leaving the business," he told the Times."That is reducing the number of companies out there and is driving the stocks of the publicly traded companies. There are fewer players in the market and the stronger survivors are getting stronger."
Yablon said his company likes stocks from Swift Transportation, Knight Transportation, USFreightways, CNF, UPS, C.H. Robinson and Landstar System.