Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

I made the mistake of looking at my retirement account this morning. Down 13% since last week. Ouch.

 

All this will come back to normal life in a week or two.
I just watched some YouTube stuff on that Spanish flue....Jeez that was a killer! Within a day a healthy man was turning blue and died just like that.
Covid - 19 is like a running nose, if compared.

 

Funny thing is that these Wisconsin Kwik Trips truck stops are better stacked with merchandise than Chicago stores now. You can get pork, beef, potatoes., milk here. Wow! I bet you younger folks never seen this before....you may have money but you can't buy anything. Is it not a parody of something? LOL

 

The problem is all of these very aggressive shutting of businesses is the scary part. People need to work and make a living. Business owners need to be open to pay their bills. The ripple effect is going to be extremely bad I’m afraid, far worse then the virus itself. At this point I I don’t know if rates are going to sky rocket or tank. There are only so much essential supplies to be hauled if everything is literally shuttered. I’d say we as truckers are shielded more then most as far as we can keep working, but we also have huge overhead and if rates tank large portions of us will be screwed. I’m just afraid the pressure to shut everything down politically is going to cause irreparable damage across the board.

 

Relax. Have a drink. Watch Better Call Saul.. Have some laugh. The turmoil will subside eventually.
Nobody can predict what the outcome will be. I prophesy that it will have a deep catalytic effect on the way big corporations are conducting their business here. China will be liability from now on. It will be let go, slowly but surely. In the long run, things will shift for better...maybe this virus will be a savior, paradoxically.

 

I speculate there will be a spike at the beginning. Then it will go down. People will try to save, save, save, use things at the minimal. That means shelves will be full at some point. But along the way we will see shortages of items we didn’t see before. So, we will see a spike again until everything will level off and become new normal.
Truckers will survive.

 

Psychological effect on people by media is huge. I left home last Tuesday and today I'll be home. 8 days straight, like in old OTR days.
I see a huge change of mood in my wife while I stayed calm and undisturbed in my truck. She is normally very reasonable and distanced women who would typically calm me down than the other way around. She wants to stay home for two weeks and don't go out. She wants me to do the same. She worries about the situation becoming similar to that of Italy or Spain. I tried to explain that those countries were much different in how they handled quarantine of infected people and all. People there were more frivolous about it too. They did not even follow common sense.

The empty shelves in Chicago stores, people gossiping and rumoring on FB don't help. I told her that all looks the same from where I sit. I was at WM in Norman, OK on Sunday and there was still toilet paper and food and soap, not disinfectants though.

There is no reasonable way to assure uninterrupted supplies when 10 million people start hoarding, under normal circumstances low scarcity commodities, all at once, and in volumes that will last them for many months. No number of warehouses will be able to store all that petty stuff.

I told her to turn the news off. Just 30 minutes at the breakfast and no FB talk. I am shoring up home today to calm her down and spend some time with her. I am tired too.

You know...it may be a media hype blown out of proportions. It does not mean we want test it and see how Covid-19 works on us, either.

 

My opinion on these speculator price gouging folks revolves around when and how they got the goods. The dude that ordered several pallets from the manufacturer early and is now selling them at a 1000% mark up? All good in my book. The guy that rented a box truck and drove around cleaning out the shelves of every retail store he could find in three states? Not cool. He deliberately helped create the shortage in order to make huge profits from it. In my mind that's not very different than the group down here that went around to every store in three counties buying up all of the generators the morning after hurricane Charlie. Creating a shortage in order to profit is immoral in my book. That isn't capitalism.

 

Just made a 5 AM trip to my local Safeway here in northern California figuring I would beat the crowd and get there as they were stocking the shelves. They were stocking, but it was packed with people. Picked up a few things to eat on my truck this week and got out. The TP isle was completely empty. They can't make it fast enough so stores are just out. People were buying up what was left of the paper towels to use instead. My wife made a trip to Costco for TP the week before the rush started so we're good for a couple months. People that waiting are just going to have to make due with what they've got.

 

Instead of a lemonade stand, kids should now open up corn cob selling stands. Long as the town didn’t shut them down for not having a permit.