Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

The rates have crashed into the core so hard today, the core is beginning to spin backwards.

Looks like the long awaited recession is at hand.

 

I’ve worked 7 days straight(last week) and been at “Home” for 30, from 12/23/22-01/31/23.“Thank you rainy day funds”.

 

The OM and I are going on 4 months

 

A cousin of mine has like 30 yrs at Estes and he said just this week they finally slowed down. Going to 4 day work week. When LTL slows that’s a really bad sign IMO. To me it’s not just about lack of imports or high inventory levels but lack of intra country economic activity.

 

They say 75% of Americans have less than $400 in the bank. That same 75% you could probably give $5 million and they'll spend it. They spend. They will find away.

It's pure rocket science economics when someone is paying an extra $1,000 month for food and gas, multiplied 70% of the population, the spending money isn't there to spend on trinkets and such.

 

No doubt, and I think is why the gov likes to give money to the poor more then anything because they know it’ll be spent instantly vs saved. Not all cases but poor are gonna poor so to speak. I don’t think it’s because they really care about them.

 

Reefer here, rates have definitely bottomed this week and last and I'm booking out as far as I can. Each week my regulars don't cut my rate I feel fortunate. I don't take anything for granted.

January was a good month for us but February I feel is going to be a struggle plus there's 3 less days in the month. The wildcard I see is the weather which I guess could cause some bottlenecks but if last week didn't cause any and rates still plummeted it's probably wishful thinking.

My rates peaked in January 2022 so I'm 12 months into the freight recession. Fingers crossed by September we will start seeing a bounce. Q3 seems to be what the megas and experts are saying too. Until than I don't see how a lot of these companies survive. I think the "purge" everyone was talking about will happen and begin to make a dent in the overcapacity issue still in the market. Some of the companies are going to have to decide if they start taking loads for losses to keep the driver busy or risk them quitting. So pretty much it's just like any other down cycle with the difference being that dealers and companies are sitting on equipment they overpaid for (including yours truly but luckily it's just one trailer).

 

Times must be rough when 17 brokers are all listing the same load. Unreal. "We're paying $10 more bucks than they are" GTFOH

 

Yup, scraping bottom of the barrel hoping for more volume from other shippers but in the mean time….

I don’t see things improving until Christmas 2023 or Jan 2024 at best.

 

And we all know dam well the original broker has probably already moved the load and it doesn't exist anymore !