trucking stock prices look for runaway ramp

Thanks for ALL the responses. There seems to be a prevailing attitude that the 'sky will be falling' soon, and it's gonna be "heavy". I personally think tough times have been upon the working class for quite some time and won't be changing anytime soon. IMO, the proliferation of E-Z credit has trapped 10's of millions, and the payday for their excesses is knocking at the door, if not kicking it down. DEBT is a 4 letter word, and too many have been, or soon will be overcome. My wife worked in the note department of a commercial bank in the 70's, and saw lots of pain agony and failures from the small biz community, as rates adjusted over 20% during the Carter years. The response from bankers? It was the market's way of culling the weak and unprepared. I don't want to be insensitive about that, but today's economic hangover is merely history repeating itself.

Someone mentioned that demand for consumer 'discretionary' goods and services will indeed slow. Demand for non-discretionaries such as food,fuel, clothing and etc. will remain. A few years back I read a statistic that startled me-The average 'prepared' food product from point of origin to the consumer's table travels in excess of 1,000 miles.
Consumer essentials/non discretionaries can't be delivered over the internet.

Transportation/trucking investments ? I think an entry/re-entry point is close at hand. I might start nibbling when the turkey is gone.

 

Brickman - "I'm a primarily used auto transporter. The buy here/pay here and repo business is VERY GOOD right now. If it wasn't for these two businesses I wouldn't have any where close to the work I do. I haul out for the buy here/pay here crowd and most of the time haul repos back to the auction. Some times I have lease returns, but mostly repos."

Definitely sounds like a specialized sector, and I'm happy to hear good news about business thriving. I have a friend that flips 5 or 6 used cars a month, and does quite well at it. His niche is the 4-10k price range, but doesn't work the buy here, pay here market.

I've been following numerous companies in the trucking sector, and have been planning on adding one or two to my DIVERSIFIED IRA. I've noticed some very interesting activity in Celadon (CLDN). The day b-4 yesterday CLDN traded 10X it's average volume. I looked back 6 years, and never found anything quite like that. This was only the 4th time in 2007 that over a million shares of CLDN were traded. Infrequent volume of that nature is generally a very bullish sign. That, coupled with the obvious freefall in share price this year indicates the interest of institutional investors. Two of Wednesday's trades were in the range of 1.5 million shares. I also noted that 2 of the other high volume days for CLDN occured in late October. Though speculative, I see this as an attractive opportunity.

 

It's been an interesting week for the transports. Fed-ex has bounced, and I notice Celadon has moved up nicely.

Nice to be home, and now I'm off the road for a few months.

 

Transports have done well this week. Two straight weeks bouncing off their lows. I've been following the industry down, and decided to nibble at a trucking company. Celadon (CLDN) was my choice, and today was my final purchase. I'd like to have a position in a RR stock as well, but I won't chase them at current prices.

This morning there was a news segment on a few LTL carriers offering attractive opportunities, if you have a 12-18 month time horizon. Specifically mentioned as attractive were; Old Dominion and Con-Way (ODFL and CNW) I believe Con-Way recently acquired CFI, which broadens their base into TL carriers.

Another recent news article all but crapped on Yellow-Roadway mostly over Teamster pension expense concerns.

I chose CLDN due to their broad based coverage of North America, US, Canada and Mexico. I also noticed some extremely high volume since late October. Speculation has it that some of the volume came as the company recently announced completion of a two million share buyback. It was also announced that another 2 million share buyback has been authorized. Assuming that huge options grants aren't the impetus, taking 16-17% of company shares off the market greatly strengthens the remaining shares.

 

Overall an abysmal week for the transports, but for that matter the whole market seemed to be in turmoil. All of the LTL carriers I've followed took a dip, (ODFL, ABFS, YRCW) as well as the majority of TL companies, WERN, JBHT, CVTI and KNX. Interestingly, Celadon (CLDN) didn't follow suit with it's peers and finished the week with a gain.