* California - Trucking companies’ plans for 2016 not without ‘restraint’
-- A year ago, shippers were tightening their belts, preparing for a potential truck capacity crunch and another round of rate increases as they struggled to expedite containerized freight around congested West Coast ports. Trucking companies were ordering scads of new, fuel-efficient Class 8 tractors and raising truck driver pay by double-digit percentages as the U.S. economy expanded and freight demand climbed... Expectations that 2015 would be a bigger, better version of a booming 2014 in the U.S. crumbled, however, when inventories built up during and after the West Coast longshore labor dispute, fuel prices plummeted and consumers kept a tight grip on their money, rather than spending more freely... The result was a drop in freight demand and overall transportation costs that turned a potential capacity crunch on U.S. highways into a capacity calm and likely blunted the sharp edge of trucking rate increases going into 2016. Shippers with overstocked inventories and plenty of available trucks are looking at a market they wouldn’t have recognized a year ago. What’s not clear is how quickly the balance between demand and capacity might shift again...
Los Angeles, CAL, USA - JOC, by William B. Cassidy - Jan 10, 2016Labels: trucking markets prognosis
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home