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United Parcel Service’s decision to go public provided the biggest spark in an otherwise quiet year for trucking stocks.

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The Atlanta-based package carrier ended 90 years of private ownership with an initial public offering of 109.4 million shares in November that raised a record $5.47 billion in what turned out to be the biggest year ever for IPOs on Wall Street.

Although proceeds from the stock sale will be used initially to buy back shares from existing shareholders, the availability of stock on a public exchange is expected to enhance UPS’s efforts to make acquisitions and form alliances with other firms to provide financial and logistics services that go beyond package delivery.

The success of UPS’s stock offering overshadowed a U.S. Tax Court decision earlier in the year that found the company liable for taxes on revenue collected by an affiliate used to insure packages with a value of more than $100. UPS said the ruling, if applied to all years since 1985 when it set up the insurance arrangement, would result in a net tax liability of $1.44 billion.

For the full story, see the Jan. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. .