How's Everyone Doing in LTL Right Now?

And we're still here.

 

We're hiring still. Lots of freight, yard is jam full of full trailers. Can't hardly move. We need a bigger terminal really. For the first time since I hired on in 2022 we're leasing trailers to meet capacity demands. Can't keep up.

 

Not saying everything is rosy everywhere, just that things are mixed.

One of the economic reports I try to pay attention to esp. in a hot economy is the JOLTS report. It says among other things how many open jobs there are per unemployed worker. Two years ago, there were 1.4 open jobs for every unemployed worker. Last year it was 1.25. Now it's 1.00. Meaning the jobs trend is in fact, nationally, heading the wrong way. This is largely by design as the Fed has been pumping the brakes since 2022 to curb inflation.

 

The difficulty from the FOMC's perspective is that inflation has been at a two handle for several months but treasurys have been selling off. Eggs have been flat or falling but the prices of insurance and housing are up. This is where the paradox of the Fed's independence shows up- deficits and tariffs, ie. political policies, are leading to a selloff in treasurys. More exactly, sovereign governments are letting their treasurys expire and not replacing them with new ones, buying gold among other things. So with a reduction in imports (ie. export of dollars), and demand for treasurys falling, then the prices for mortgages, insurance, credit card debt are going up because they're all indirectly pegged to the yields on treasurys. In short, when we stop importing junk from China, they stop turning those dollars into treasurys, and your mortgage goes up. The housing crisis gets worse, and the Fed is caught in the middle of what is really a political problem.
One way the Fed could jam down rates on the long end of the yield curve is through QE- buying treasurys, mortgages, or even stocks. It's reluctant to do this because it still holds a ton of these from its post-GFC round of QE. QE would also dump dollars into the economy and re-stoke inflation.
However, were the president to start firing members of the FOMC and replacing them with members who would support QE, the QE would certainly bring those yields down. Of course, this would probably encourage even more fiscal spending. Under the current system, the Fed is at least an indirect check on deficits since we now pay more for interest than the military and people are actually talking about the debt and thinking about solutions. But with a politicized Fed, the two political parties would control the rates at which they pay for their deficit spending and that check would be gone. That, to me, would be a bad place to end up at.

 

I just wanna doom spend, honestly.

tired of working so hard to barely feel comfortable.

I have no debt, drive a 30 year old pickup truck, no children, and still feel like I’m barely making it.

Hell if we go by the IRS my wife and I are in the top 10% of earners. Wonder how millennials do it with 2-3 kids.

 

Barely that’s how. In a single income family of 5. We have cut way back and it’s still just barely getting by. There’s no saving anything at the moment. Things aren’t picking up, and gas out west is still through the roof.

 

“ Single income family “ that’s a big one now a days. Keep pumping out kids to the point the man becomes the breadwinner while the wife stays home with the kids. This puts so much pressure on the man financially working 60 hrs weeks and making 100k to take care of yourself a wife and 4-5 kids #### would seem mentally draining. One thing I’ve learned that has helped me save 15k in the last 8 months is you have more control over expenses than you do income. A lot of ppl just don’t think about managing expenses until they absolutely have to

 

Figured I’d throw out a quick update on things at CCFS….

Fargo barn is doing pretty good freight wise, all of our north side barns are actually. I’m gonna be moving over to the linehaul side of things soon. Could be tomorrow, next week or next month.

I think I’ll be a “floater”, basically going where I’m needed. Kind of our extra board if that makes sense.

It’ll raise my pay by a few hundred dollars a month, which raises it over the span of a year, which I like. If I go west I’ll have either twin 48’s or a 48 and a pup. I’ll be keeping the truck I’m in now, which is awesome. Yeah looking forward to this.

 

Anyone else have a guy that takes the top extra board spot just to pass literally every run? ####’s lowkey special ed

 

if we’re talking city work I’ve been letting the new guys do that crap.

I’ll take my $1 paycut, and stay a yard dog/dock worker for now.