Transportation providers are going to have to maintain an aggressive posture when competing for business during the upcoming bid season.
An unseasonable upward trend in truckload tender volumes is giving domestic transportation providers the potential inflection point they have waiting for.
The less-than-truckload sector has been disrupted by a very public dispute between Yellow and the Teamsters. Rates have already seemingly responded and may continue to see support.
In a market where capacity is abundant, it is difficult to identify underlying shifts in demand.
There are some positive signs that the freight market has cleared most of the post-pandemic rubble, but full recovery is still a ways off.
If the spread between contract and spot rates narrows, capacity will become increasingly inconsistent in the second half of the year.
Underlying shifts in domestic shipping are showing up in the spot market.
The jury is still out on whether truckload demand has hit the floor.
Companies are still trying to get their margins back to pre-pandemic levels with price increases on finished goods. This will continue to put freight demand at risk in the second half of the year.
Flatbed capacity tends to be as erratic as its demand, making it harder to secure in general.
After over a year of declining volumes and rates, trucking spot rates have leveled and demand has just witnessed an unseasonable jump.
The pandemic may have exposed long-term weakness to the railroads’ intermodal growth plans.
Southern California markets were flush with transportation activity during the pandemic. That has eroded and then some. This has not only left transportation networks exposed operationally but also created pricing gaps.
What do historically low rejection rates mean for the truckload industry?
Upstream and historic values are predicting another strong deterioration in truckload spot rates in April. How seriously should we take this?
Perhaps the biggest question of 2023 for domestic trucking is when will the surplus of capacity fade to a point that prices stop falling. One data point provides deeper insight than simply a count of drivers or tractors.
Lunar New Year normally brings a slow shipping period for imports, but the lead-in period was also lackluster. With many companies calling for a return to seasonal patterns later in the year, just how close are we to that being a reality?
Many people get hung up on trying to figure out how much capacity is readily available in trucking when they should be more focused on monitoring demand trends.
Are supply chains already manifesting significant changes in domestic transportation patterns?
Inventory growth in December is not a great sign for carriers who are expecting the market to bottom this winter.
