UPS United Parcel Service

Schneider National Inc., the largest privately held trucking company in the U.S. by revenue, said it plans to go public next year in a sign that a years-long drought in stock offerings from the freight transportation and logistics industry may be ending.

Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider is the seventh-largest trucking company in the U.S. and counted $3.4 billion in trucking revenue in 2015, according to SJ Consulting Group. The company, which operates a fleet of more than 11,000 trucks, has been family owned since it was founded by Al Schneider in 1935, and it has remained in the Schneider family's hands through decades of growth into a nationwide business.

The company said in a statement that it is undertaking the IPO "to facilitate continuity of controlling ownership of Schneider by the future generations of the Schneider family, while continuing forward with its long-standing, independent, and professional, corporate governance structure." A spokesman declined to comment beyond the statement.

Logistics and transportation companies have in recent years opted to secure funding from private-equity firms or sell to larger rivals rather than issue shares. But that may be starting to change. Coyote Logistics LLC was working toward a potential IPO in 2015 before United Parcel Service Inc. bought the freight broker for $2 billion. ZTO Express Co., a Chinese logistics provider, filed for a U.S. IPO in July.

Schneider is plotting a stock offering despite weak demand from shippers that has hit trucking-company earnings this year. Shares of many of Schneider's competitors plunged 50% or more between last summer and early 2016 as the freight market soured, and trucking stocks have only recently begun to rebound.

The company said it hasn't filed a registration statement for the offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission but expects to do so soon.

Schneider's reputation for strong management and solid finances has made it the target of rumors of public offerings for several years, and those rumors have picked up steam since the death in 2012 of Don Schneider, the son of founder Al Schneider and its chief executive from 1976 until 2002.

John Anderson of Greenbrier Equity Group LLC, a specialist in the freight transportation market, said Schneider may have trouble commanding a high price because the market for its core trucking business has been soft this year. But he said the company would generate interest because of the "very attractive fundamentals of the company, not the fundamentals of the market."

Schneider's IPO announcement comes at a weak period for the trucking industry.

Trucking-company earnings in general have declined this year under soft demand for U.S. domestic shipping. The Cass Freight Index, which measures truck and rail demand in the U.S., has shown shipment counts through much of 2016 at the lowest levels in four years. Analysts say retailers are still trying to pare down high inventories this year and that a shift in consumers toward e-commerce has roiled distribution channels, hurting freight carriers that serve the industrial market.

Still, Mr. Anderson said this could be an attractive time for a new name to draw investment. "This is not a perilous time for trucking at all," he said. "There is not a stay-alive risk out there for big, good carriers. There is an earnings risk if we continue to have soft demand. But the good companies are managing capacity well and this might be a time when smart, long-term money would want to get into trucking."

Write to Paul Page at paul.page@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 10, 2016 16:55 ET (20:55 GMT)

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