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TRUCKING PROGNOSIS * USA & Canada
* USA - Freight carriers see rough road ahead in 2009
Sliding demand and stiffer competition for customers promise to make 2009 another tough year for the nation's freight carriers
New York,NY,USA -Associated Press/Forbes, by SAMANTHA BOMKAMP -6 Feb 2009: -- ... Trucking companies have already faced more than a year of challenging times and expect more difficulty ahead... In the fourth quarter of 2008, many trucking companies reaped the benefits of sharply lower fuel prices, but shrinking shipping demand hampered earnings... * San Mateo, Calif.-based Con-way Inc. swung to a loss, and the trucker's chief executive said the fourth-quarter results "foreshadowed an extraordinary decline in demand for freight services."
* Heartland Express said profit rose on gains from property sales, but added that first-quarter shipments this year are "off to a dismal start," and it doesn't expect them to pick up in the near future.
* YRC Worldwide Inc., one of the nation's largest trucking companies, reported a much wider loss than Wall Street expected, although it was narrower than a year earlier because of cost cuts. The company is continuing to talk to its banks about restructuring the terms of its bank debt.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst John Larkin predicted that pricing would get even worse this year, because the size of truck fleets isn't falling as fast as demand. Even if demand does flatten out, he said there are still too many trucks on the road competing for too few shipments...
* Canada - In trucking, ‘pessimism' reigns
Toronto,Ontario,CAN -The Globe and Mail, by JOHN PARTRIDGE -February 6, 2009: -- It makes perfect sense to David Bradley, who heads both the Ontario Trucking Association and the Canadian Trucking Alliance, that the trucking business in Canada's most populous province turned out to be one of the hardest hit segments of the economy when it came to shocking January job loss numbers unveiled Friday by Statistics Canada... The Statscan figures showed 129,000 jobs were lost across the country in the first month of this year, the largest monthly hit on record... One of the areas highlighted by the agency was a drop of 30,000 in transportation and warehousing, which, it said, came “largely” in the trucking sector in Ontario... Trucking is considered a leading indicator of shifts in the economy both up and down, and Mr. Bradley said Ontario truckers have been in a “freight recession” for the past 18 months, as their manufacturer customers – especially auto and auto parts makers – have cut back production... In fact, bankruptcies among Ontario truckers small and large reached a record 157 in 2007, and to the end of last October – the most recent date for which figures are available – another 140 of them had gone under, Mr. Bradley said. “With two very difficult months to go, I would say the number for 2008 will easily exceed 160 ... and I suspect this year will be much the same,” he said...* USA - Retail container traffic to fall 11.8% in first half of 2009
Washington,DC,USA -The Trucker News Services -6 Feb 2009: -- After ending 2008 down 7.9 percent, cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to drop at an even faster pace during the first half of 2009 as the economic recession continues, according to the monthly Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and IHS Global Insight... Final data for 2008 showed volume for the year at 15.2 million Twenty-Foot-Equivalent Units, compared with 16.5 million TEU in 2007, a decline of 7.9 percent and the lowest total since 2004, when 14 million TEU moved through the ports. One TEU is one 20-foot container or its equivalent... “[The year] 2008 was one of the most challenging years retailers have seen, and all indications are that 2009 won’t be any better,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said... Labels: trucking markets prognosis
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