You reap what you sow

I’ve written about this before, but my son started the EGG PLANT (raising chickens) some five months ago in hopes of producing eggs while teaching his kids how to care for animals. This included outplaying the foxes, learning when to let them out of the coop, etc. His nurturing of the chicks is now producing some two dozen eggs per day. All of that hard work is beginning to pay off for his family as well as mine.

While Covid-19 has had some devastating effects on our country and businesses, from what I can see, most of you carriers have weathered the storm well. Back in March and April, you were implementing new processes to keep your doors open. Whether that was diversifying your business, allowing office staff to work remotely, cleaning your facilities to ensure you were meeting the CDC guidelines, balancing displaced networks, returning to work, or the myriad of other issues not mentioned.

Like all challenges, Covid-19 appears to be just that, another obstacle that a resilient industry faces head-on. The long term effects of all this mess remain to be seen for a future date, but your P&L’s for the moment look pretty good. All signs are pointing to a nice peak season as shippers rush to restock the consumers’ shelves as quickly as possible. Looking forward, I believe the future is very bright for trucking while all the fundamentals are still in place for a tight capacity crunch. So, what are you doing to prepare yourselves for that? You must look ahead to better times and prepare today for how you will handle the upside of tight capacity tomorrow.

Have you aligned yourself with the right shippers? Are your terms agreeable? Is your network ready to be streamlined? Do you have enough drivers/tractors? Is it time for an acquisition? Or is cash/credit available to grow? Or, equally as important, is your staff prepared for the future? Hope so because I believe we are about to experience something as good or better than 2018. Get your baskets out and prepare to pick up the eggs!