Rolling Down The Dividend Highway

Investing In Dividend Paying Trucking And Transportation StocksEvery day the news headlines are seemingly dominated by the continued decline in oil prices and how lower oil prices will affect the energy industry in general. I wanted to take this drop in oil price a step further and examine a group of stocks that is rarely discussed yet intimately tied to the price of oil and diesel fuel, trucking and transportation services.There's little question that the trucking industry is huge. In fact, the U.S. trucking industry alone is estimated to be approximately $650 billion in annual revenue. This staggering number accounts for 5% of the U.S. GDP. Trucking also dominates the commercial transport industry as a whole accounting for 84% of total revenue. The next major commercial transportation mode, rail, is a distant second, and only accounts for just 6% of total revenue. As one might expect, the trucking industry is one of the largest consumers of diesel oil and is very much impacted by crude price gyrations. It's estimated that the U.S. trucking industry alone consumes over 52 billion gallons of fuel every year. Just trying to grasp these figures can be difficult.With that being said, I'd like to do an overview of trucking industry dividend paying stocks. With lower oil and diesel prices, one might expect better profit margins for these companies going forward. Let's see what this sector has to offer.One of the largest names in the space, by market cap, JB Hunt Transport... Read more