$62.80
$396.10
bear $62.80
base $267.60
bull $396.10
margin of safety $120.00
market price* $238.39
Ryder rents, leases and maintains commercial trucks and runs logistics for other companies. In 2025 its fleet business (multi-year ChoiceLease full-service leases, SelectCare maintenance and short-term commercial rental, from 789 locations in the US and Canada) brought in 38% of revenue. Supply Chain Solutions (warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment, transportation management) brought in 43%, and Dedicated Transportation (trucks plus drivers run for a single customer) brought in 18%. Ryder purchases a lease truck only after the customer has signed the lease, and it resells the truck on the used-truck market when the lease ends. So the business is really a steady replacement cycle. It earns a spread over the life of each truck and gets part of its money back when the truck is resold. How we measured earnings. For a fleet lessor, gross capital spending (about $2.1 to $3.7 billion a year) badly overstates the cost of staying in business, because $0.4 to $1.2 billion a year comes back from selling used trucks. So we measure fleet reinvestment net of resale proceeds and treat only spending above the business's normal rate of reinvestment for its revenue growth as optional growth. We count share-based pay as a cost. We remove swings in receivables and payables. Two lines stay in as recurring cash costs, because they have gone the same direction almost every year for a decade: other prepaid assets, and accrued liabilities, which include payments on Ryder's own property leases. On this basis, cash earnings swing hard with the fleet cycle. They went from heavily negative in 2018-2019, when Ryder over-expanded its lease fleet and then had to write down used-truck values, to $1.4-1.5 billion in 2020-2022, when it paused truck purchases and used-truck prices hit records. They fell to about zero in 2023 as purchases caught up, then reached $346 million in 2024 and about $1.0 billion in 2025. Before paying interest, cash earnings were $0.2 billion, $0.7 billion and $1.4 billion in 2023-2025. Normal earning power. No single year represents this business. We use the full cycle since 2020, after Ryder exited the UK and moved its growth toward warehousing and dedicated contracts. We strip out the excess used-truck sale proceeds of 2021-2022, roughly $900 million in total, which came from a price spike that has since reversed. We also pair the 2020 purchase pause with the 2023 catch-up. That gives about $1.07 billion a year in cash earnings before interest. A second check that charges ordinary depreciation in place of actual truck purchases gives about $1.08 billion for 2023-2025. We use $1.05 billion before interest, about $650 million after today's roughly $400 million of cash interest, or about $17 per share. That is above Ryder's reported earnings per share (about $12 in 2025). The gap comes mainly from tax deferred by accelerated tax depreciation on a fleet that is constantly replaced, from non-cash amortization of acquired intangibles, and from cash collected on finance-type leases. We did not use 2025's higher figure. 2025 was flattered by low truck purchases ($2.1 billion, against $2.7 billion in 2024), a cut that deepened in the first half of 2026 ($0.83 billion against $1.20 billion), and deferred replacement has to be paid for later. The first year of our base case is therefore about 25% below 2025's actual pre-interest cash flow, even though 2025 itself was well up on 2024. Debt. Ryder owed about $7.46 billion at June 30, 2026 ($1.97 billion due within a year) and held $219 million of cash. Most of its fixed-rate debt, $6.1 billion, carries an average interest rate of 5.10%, and its market value is above face value. That makes it cheaper than our 6% yardstick for its remaining few years, worth roughly $150 million. Net debt for valuation is about $7.1 billion. Because it is fixed and below our yardstick, that $150 million credit applies in every case. Base case (about $268 per share). Pre-interest cash flow holds at about $1.05 billion a year with no growth credited. Truck lease prices are set off the cost of the truck, so higher truck prices are passed through, but that only keeps pace and is not real growth. The lease fleet has been held roughly flat since 2020. The warehousing and dedicated acquisitions (Whiplash in 2022, Impact Fulfillment Services in 2023, Cardinal Logistics in 2024) are too recent a habit, and paused in 2025, to count as proven growth. The earning power continues past year 10. Ryder has run this lease-and-maintain model for decades, about 5,000 customers both lease and rent from it, and the fleet is replaced from the business's own cash. The business is worth about $17.5 billion, owes about $7.1 billion, and the difference is about $10.4 billion, or about $268 per share. Bear case (about $63 per share). Ryder repeats the worst of its last decade. Freight stays weak for two years, a used-truck price slump and a replacement-cost squeeze follow, and pre-interest cash flow drops to about $150-350 million for two years. That is below the interest bill for that short stretch and funded by more borrowing, as in 2019. After that it settles at about $600-650 million, which is the median of the whole 2016-2025 record including the overbuild years. Named risks behind this: recently imposed tariffs on imported vehicles and parts, which the company says have already raised maintenance costs; used-truck values, which fell sharply in 2023; and the company's own 2018-2019 record of purchasing too many trucks. The business is worth about $9.5 billion, owes about $7.1 billion, and the difference is about $2.4 billion, or about $63 per share. Bull case (about $396 per share). The higher 2025 level of roughly $1.35 billion before interest proves to be the new normal. That would happen if the shift toward contract warehousing and dedicated fleets, plus disciplined, contract-backed lease purchases, keeps cash flow at 2025 levels through a normal truck-replacement cycle. The business is worth about $22.5 billion, owes about $7.1 billion, and the difference is about $15.4 billion, or about $396 per share. Margin-of-safety price. Leverage turns modest swings in fleet cash flow into large swings in what the shares are worth, and the gap between the bear case ($63) and the base case ($268) is wide. The margin-of-safety price is $120. From there, if the shares move toward the base value over four to five years, the base case plus the dividend (about $3.70 a year) implies more than a 20% annual return. A fall to the bear value would still be a serious loss, which is why the price is set no higher. Change since our previous estimate (bear $32, base $147, bull $224). We previously used higher discount rates for this company's risk and did not separately deduct its debt. We now discount every business at the same rate, carry risk only in the spread between the cases, value the business before its lenders and then subtract the $7.1 billion it owes. We also now measure fleet reinvestment across a full cycle net of resale proceeds, which shows higher normal cash earnings than the earlier estimate. The higher debt deduction pushes the other way. What would make this wrong: another fleet over-expansion; a lasting rise in truck prices that lease pricing cannot recover; or a sustained used-truck slump. Any of these would push results toward the bear case.