The freight recession is officially over.

who sets the minimum then? Everyone has different costs

and people are hauling it any way, they can have it

 

The loads are being covered unfortunately.
Soo many dummies out here taking anything at any price.

 

I don't think we are comparing apples to apples when comparing first Trump term tariffs to what Trump has stated he will do once he is officially in office. The tariffs first time were small compared to 60% tariffs on chinese imports and 10% across the board on everything else.

The below is a quote from an economics blog that was written in 2022 directly supporting that the 2016-2020 tariffs (that were ultimately kept in place by the Biden administration) did not meaningfully contribute to inflation. You can see that the numbers below are miniscule compared to the 10% tariff alone (we import around $3.5 trillion each year, so that tariff alone would add $350 billion in tariff dollars).

"Total U.S. tariff and customs duties collected rose from $36.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016 to $85.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021. This increase of $49.1 billion represents only 0.3% of total U.S. personal consumer expenditures of $16.0 trillion (Bureau of Economic Analysis). Rolling back or even eliminating U.S. tariffs would have only a minimal and transitory impact, at best, on price levels and inflation in the United States."

Tariff increases did not cause inflation, and their removal would undermine domestic supply chains

Ultimately economies are impacted by such a huge amount of different factors that I think it is incredibly difficult to predict exactly how these tariffs will play out, but it will certainly be interesting.

 

Automotive and motorcycles were complaining about the increased cost of steel.

Tools got more expensive
Freon also went up.

Truckers on this forum were complaining about inflation.

So. Yes. The consumer saw price increases.

 

Well at this point, there is really no comparison, it is a negotation process that hasn't even begun. So right now there is no means to say there will be an impact, just wait until the latter part of Jaunary 2025, then we can put some numbers to it.

Increase of steel?

I know aluminum was the problem for a long time, but also companies like GM/Ford/Stalanis all do short term purchasing, which doesn't allow them to hedge inflation. Honda, Nissan and Toyota kept their costs controlled.

Tools? Where? I saw a drop in prices, but Freon is a different story, this was due to reduced manufacturing and still is a problem.

The inflation in this industry was caused by the rising rates and the need by many armchair owners to get into the game, the delays in manufacturing and the increased cost of a truck were all do to the high demand for new trucks as the boom we experienced added in more and more capacity that we still deal with today. This left a lot of fleets seeing close to 60% increase in the cost of a replacement truck, while the repo rate has been up and down since 2018.

The inflation that the consumer saw came from 2021 forward. We have yet to have a deflationary period which is traditional in the cycle, but now we may see it.

 

If there is profit margins then production will start in the US, because the lack of tariffs essentially all we are doing is moving product around manufactured by other countries.


Salary for a Chinese factory worker was around $1000 per month on average if I’m not mistaken. That’s 4-5 Chinese worker vs 1 American.

Applying tariffs to all incoming products not only creates jobs here but also keeps the money here.

bad for mega corporations good for worker.

 

I understand that November 2024 isn't January 2025, but economists and people in general can absolutely hypothesize on what the short/mid/long term impact on the economy the tariffs ole Donny J Trump said he would implement once he is in office. He wasn't vague about it, he said 60% for all Chinese imports and 10% across all other imports.

Now whether or not those tariffs are implemented as stated is yet to be seen. Either way it will be interesting for those of us operating in the truckload market.

 

Rent started climbing in 2017.
Housing went to the moon in 2020.

Tarriffs are inflation. We all experienced the first time.

 

A minor quibble: Freon has gone up because of the continuing changes surrounding CFCs. R-22 has been phased out of Manufacture. R-410A is on its way out, starting in January, and ending phaseout in 2036. Manufacturers are already prepping for the next big thing.

As to the original point of this: I wouldn't call the recession over. We're seeing some seasonal shift, as we do every year. That said: I'm going to strongly anticipate that we're not going to see an end until Q1-Q2 at earliest. I'm still seeing downward pressure on rates, and we're not having *too* much difficulty moving freight at that.

 

Any more good news? Lol.