Economy tough on trucking in second quarter

That's a scary number! I've been trying to watch for those stats. Thanks for posting that.

 

Thinning of the herd !!!

 

like the article said, it should translate into more pay/miles for the companies left behind after all of this is over. if people can hang on, they'll have a pretty sweet ride in 6-12mos.

 

That's my hope...

 

That pace is incredible... That makes over 1600 companies with 5+ trucks that went under this year. Absolutely crazy.

Best of luck to those who are trying to hang on.

 

Then there's this from the Internet Truckstop Magazine, July 2008 issue:

"Demand (for trucks) continues to soar. In May the MDI index was 3 times higher than in January indicating a significant truck crunch for the 2nd quarter. As capacity (trucks) continues to leave the market and freight rebounds slightly expect capacity to remain tight at least until August." This means there's more freight than trucks to move it.

 

A huge part of what I do right now is inter modal logistics. If there's a surplus of freight, it sure isn't getting/leaving the US by way of Hamburg-Sud, MSC, Maersk, etc. as we work with all of these carriers. In fact, the odds of a load making it onto a vessel are pretty good right now because there's usually EMPTY spaces left on the vessel ... or it's delayed to fill said spaces.

The numbers just aren't right: US manufacturing is down (slow exports), US dollar is down (slow imports) ... so what's being trucked around in such abundance? I don't get it.