NEW YORK — Transportation stocks are no longer the highly cyclical companies they were in previous business cycles, say industry analysts at U.S.-based investment banking firm Stifel Nicolaus.

As long as demand continues to outstrip supply, carriers that can effectively deal with industry challenges have an opportunity to create “significant, incremental shareholder value,” the firm says.

Despite worries that transportation will suffer from more offshore outsourcing, the analysts say “elongation” of supply chains tend to offset globalization trends.

Other freight demand drivers include continued growth of “big-box” retailers and “e-tailers” that have developed “insatiable appetite for truckload & intermodal capacity; as well as population growth and, with it, increased demand for food and consumer nondurables.

Of course, the firm acknowledges forces that constrain domestic freight transportation supply such as worsening truckload driver shortage, worsening highway congestion; continued industry consolidation as big carriers expand; and “driver friendly” operations such as dedicated carriage and regional services — thus pushing out small carriers in those markets.

New hours of service rules have reduced truckload productivity, says the firm, but also may have closed an “economic loophole” for rogue carriers that survive rising costs by allowing drivers to break HOS rules. And while railroads have made great strides in the last few years, they “simply are not the silver bullet solution to the transportation capacity crisis,” the analysts point out.