Thank you for reading the July Truckload Market Update. As you may know, I am both the author of this newsletter and the host of the Meet Me For Coffee Podcast, where “freight markets and economics meet”. Our most recent podcast episode was a special Mid-Year Freight Market Update panel. On the panel were industry experts: David Spencer , Vice President of Market Intelligence at Arrive Logistics, Chris Pickett - Chief Commercial Officer at Flock Freight and analyst at Pickett Research, Jason Miller - Eli Broad Professor of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University, and Dean Croke - Market Analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics. These experts shared their insights and predictions around the current state of the US economy and the freight market, and the future state of freight. I think their insights make for the perfect July newsletter, so I have taken their quotes and broken them down here in this written format. Thanks for reading!
I asked our guests a series of questions, and let each answer before moving on, here were the questions and the responses.
Chris Picket: I would say the current state of the economy is unexpectedly strong I think in terms of what we figured kind of coming into 2025 the freight market is unexpectedly flat to neutral. I think when we were on the panel back in January I was probably the most bullish box on the screen in terms of where freight rates are headed and the reason was we had kind of broken out of the kind of most extended four-year freight rate cycle that kicked off going into COVID and went into the post-COVID correction in early 2022. We spent two long years in purgatory and had just broken year-over-year inflationary in about the third quarter going into the fourth quarter 2024. And so based on the last five or six cycles, typically when that happens, it's a steady march up and to the right. Certainly it can be unpredictable a lot of times the slope and how high you go, but it's poised to break higher. The macro indicators were all coming in pretty firm in terms of where consumption was, GDP, relative inventory levels. I think the one strange bird was industrial production. I think coming through kind of really the last five or six quarters, US industrial production was effectively flat year-over-year despite strong to accelerating US consumption, which is something that doesn't normally happen for very long.
So, I think the prediction coming into 2025 was that consumers are still going to hang in there, despite the draft of headwinds that have accumulated. Consumers will consume, consumption stays solid, GDP hangs in there, there's no recession, and eventually, industrial production will have to come up to meet consumption as inventory burns off and things get back to normal economic conditions. All that was happening really through the end of January. I think from a macro standpoint, the consumption numbers came remarkably strong, at least the preliminaries in Q1, although they adjusted down with forward revisions. Industrial production did start to kind of surge up again, surge is a relative term, plus one to one and a half percent. All that looked great. Then all of a sudden, the trade war starts, shots are fired kind of end of February with the first couple of executive orders and things turned right over.
I think consumption mostly hung in there but definitely softened and certainly market rates. We started Q1 with the US spot truckload index up at plus 12.5% versus a forecast of I think 15% like the first three weeks of January, and then from there it skidded steadily lower and again how much of that is supply versus demand effects you know we can kind of debate that but certainly as those executive orders started coming in the additional 10% on China, 25% on Canada and Mexico, things have shifted dramatically since then. I think you have seen consumers pull back. And I think you've seen producers and supply chains effectively stall out and cease from making any material kind of investments, stall hiring until we get more kind of forward visibility on total land cost and arguably that hasn't changed.
Jason Miller: I would echo a lot of what Chris said. I was fairly bullish as well. I wrote a December piece in supply chain management review where I was quite bullish on where things would be in 2025 because we had a lot of tailwinds at the time. We had just had 100 basis points of interest rate cuts, so everybody was expecting the housing market, not only existing sales, but more importantly, those new starts that generate so much freight to really be rocking and rolling. And those were down 7% year-over-year in May. If somebody would have said to me, housing starts in 25 are going to be less than 24, I would have laughed at them six months ago and said, that's just not possible. And so when you look at it now, we had a tight market in January up till MLK day. February is February, February is always weak. And then I think where most of us were at was we expected March we would start to see tightening as a lot of the industrial economy and housing starts coming back up. And then it would start progressively tightening throughout the year. June would be really tight. July always loosens up as auto plants shut down. We're past the beverage season, and the produce season is waning. But then we would tighten up in the fall and instead basically what we have right now is a repeat of 2024 from a pricing side. If you look at linehaul spot rates, you look at spot rates with fuel, they're literally now flat for the last two years basically with little seasonal spikes. I was just looking at DAT’s spot rates this morning because I always like to look at what happens in July. Like three days ago, they were 2.11 a mile, then they were 2.09 yesterday, and the update today puts it at 2.07. And so that's just telling me it's already heading back down and we're basically where we were again in 2024. And as Chris mentioned, this is really 100% due to the tariffs and the tariff uncertainty because you can see this in the comments from the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing surveys, the Dallas Fed manufacturing survey, the Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey is we were on a very nice upward movement for new order movement in December and January, and that's fallen off of a cliff right now.
And what scares me the most is you now have a lot of the reciprocal rates which caused the market, remember, to melt down in April. They're basically kicking back in here in August, it appears. And there's just one real wild card out there, we don't know what's going to happen with the EU. And so the market is not in a healthy place right now, certainly compared to where I thought it would be. Like I look back in December and I'm like, "Oh, I thought that spot rates would be up 20% year-over-year by the Q4 of 2025." I'm like, "that is not heading towards a good trajectory at the moment."
Dean Croke: Definitely thought that we'd be seeing some improvement seasonally, especially in the spring this year, but of course that didn't happen. One of the things we were thinking was that we would see a replication of 2024, even 2023 to a degree. So Jason mentioned that our rates are within a penny a mile of both those years nationally on the 7-day rolling average. My prediction was that rates would be fairly flat this year in the spot market. I didn't see a lot of growth largely because this wasn't from a demand perspective, it was more from a capacity perspective. I didn't see any change in capacity because carriers don't need to go anywhere. They're not under any financial pressure to leave the market where rates are at the moment right now because of the tailwinds diesel prices have been able to give them. So my take on the market at the start of the year was that we would see fairly flat rates. The market was close to equilibrium. And what we were seeing was every time there was a surge in volume, capacity would jump back into the market and flatten out spot rates. And, Jason mentioned it, we saw it last week, we always see a spike driven by produce season, we saw it with road check week, we'll see it again with break check week in August. Rates go up and they come back down, which tells us the market's at equilibrium. So that sort of was our take and I think that's panning out, that rates will be where they started the year at by the end of the year.
David Spencer: Pricing this year is the same as Jason mentioned, but this year is definitely not the same. I think a lot of the the reason why we're seeing pricing in the same place still is because how much lower can rates really go and still sustain capacity, right? And so I think that's something that is really interesting, how long we've been in a sort of depressed rate environment. More than three years now where we've seen deflationary conditions really going strong. So I think coming into the year that was what we were all looking at. We were looking at an increased seasonal response to demand surges as a good indicator of capacity coming back into balance or more in balance than it has been. I think that was a reason why a lot of us were optimistic about inflationary conditions this year for rates, but I think you can't speak enough to the impact tariffs have had, but I think it's also made things really difficult to get a handle on if you look at the volatility of the way shippers have moved volume this year whether that's pull forward, stopping and starting, you look at warehousing is jammed up a bit, you're looking at the free trade zone type situations that shippers are utilizing this year, right? So, a lot of pull forward in inventory. To what degree is demand weakness or underperformance to seasonality this year slowing demand or is it a result of pull forward? I think you know it takes time for that data to really come out and come through. So, we're still getting a good feel for what's driving these conditions, but certainly that stability year over year is something we're seeing as well.
David Spencer: There's a lot of discussion around what's going on with the consumer and inflation, the ability for the consumer to continue to spend at the levels they had been spending and really drive goods consumption which drives freight demand. So in addition to that the contraction in manufacturing. Recent data did show a little bit of an uptick in production in the freight heavy goods industries, but new orders were down still, so a little bit of a mixed bag around manufacturing. I think we'll look to see what manufacturing does. Consumption and manufacturing are big drivers of freight. So CPI, inflation, how far will the dollar go compared to what it used to? What drives freight is really what we're watching, as it pertains to the economy. I think consumer spending, power and industrial production manufacturing are the big ones.
Jason Miller: The couple of big questions are one, the EU trade situation. I cannot stress enough how big of a trading partner the European Union is with the United States and vice versa. It is collectively our largest export destination and it is collectively our largest import destination when you combine them all together. So, we've got to see where that plays out because if that goes into a full trade war, that's even more negative news for freight demand. So watching what happens with USMCA because just seeing how this all plays out. Right now my understanding is with finished vehicles that tariffs are being applied to the non USMCA compliant finished vehicles but eventually the goal is to tariff everything but subtracting out the US value added from that. Customs just hasn't figured out how to implement that. So, that's an additional tax. And then two, seeing if the Fed cuts rates here in July, I don't see that happening. And then I think we'll get sort of the picture for the back half of the year. But I'm kind of with Dean on this. I just think we're going to basically repeat 2024 at this point because historically, I'm a firm believer in Demand side dynamics are what drive bullish pricing cycles. It's all about the demand. Folks get obsessed over supply side, but like English language proficiency, that's not going to change anything substantially, right? When I hear figures, people say 15% of drivers are non-compliant. Like come on, that’s just a nonsense made-up number, right? Um there's no way that could feasibly be possible. And so you look what could drive demand in the second half of this year. You've got no containerized import surge coming. If anything, that's going to be down. Manufacturing activity in general is not doing great. Oil prices are so low. Fracking rig counts have been declining. So, you don't have fracking coming to the rescue. The single family housing start market is already past peak building season. So, we've missed that. So you then have what are consumers going to do with auto spending? because there's good reason to believe a lot of auto demand got pulled forward in the first half of the year. What does that mean for the second half of the year? You've got, you mentioned, Samantha, the tax credits for like new appliances going away. That's a big one right there because you start having weak single family housing and no tax credit for more efficient appliances. That's not a demand generator. And so you start looking at everything It's very difficult for me to point to sectors that are going to generate a lot of freight for carriers because anything associated with the AI data center buildout, yes, that helps certain construction oriented carriers, but warehousing construction is down at the same time. So, there's a counterbalance on that front. Aerospace is doing very well. Tariffs really aren't going to slow Boeing down. But that doesn't generate much freight. And so when you start looking at the freight centric sectors, there aren't that many good things to see. And you know, we were talking about it before the start, you've got a major bankruptcy in DelMonte Foods. I mean, they are a very large shipper. Canned foods are super heavy and disproportionately contribute to freight volume. What happens there? And so it's just to me right now difficult to get excited. Capacity seems to be moving sideways. If demand, my index has it up year-over-year by a percent and a half, which is okay, but it's not great. That's probably going to start tipping back towards neutral. And if capacity doesn't change, it's just more of the same at this point.
Chris Pickett: I definitely agree with Jason and David. I think it's the consumer that's going to continue to drive the bus here, and that's going to be a function of what happens with tariff driven inflation. I still think there's a case for spot market linehaul rates being up, not the 30 to 40% that I was projecting back in January, but certainly I think there's a case for 10 to 15% unless the economy goes into a full-blown recession. You know, if the fog clears to some degree, businesses can make more long-term decisions as more of these trade agreements become permanent, whatever the hell that means, right? These days, it’s still does China stay where it's at really? Is Vietnam staying firm? Where are we with Canada and Mexico? And as that becomes more firm, do you start to see supply chains redeploying capital? And you start to see any version of recalibration taking place? So, as total landing cost changes, is certainly entire supply chains are likely relocating back to the US, but do you see businesses making different sourcing decisions where you might take, you know, 30% of your imports that made more sense to import from China or Southeast Asia and divert some of that to to the US now? You know, not full-on, but do you start to see some of those lanes changing? Do you start to see that creating a bit of an asymmetric tailwind for US manufacturing? And do you start to see network shifting? And you kind of see this during disruption events like when a big storm comes in and suddenly contract lanes go away temporarily as you have a full splash of freight into the spot market. As more of these global supply chains do take some level of recalibration, do we see higher volume predictable contract import lanes suddenly becoming mini bids as some of that freight gets resourced out the market as things change. So, you know, if you see some of that take place, you could get a bit of an asymmetric kind of tailwind relative to the level of consumption that could have a marginal impact on the freight market. I'm not basing the forecast on that, right? Because that's driven by three chains of whatifs, but then on the supply side I think there is something to the spot market being arguably unprofitable for the last six or seven quarters. The latest ATRA survey data I think had you know marginal cost of truckload transportation up 26% 24 versus 2020 while all in spot rates were down like 15%. I argue certainly a lot happened in those four years, but at some point that math just doesn't math, and I think you already see these more anecdotal cases of larger carriers, 100 truck plus fleets that have been on the record saying, we haven't made money since 2022. And if you watched the Meet Me For Coffee Podcast back in January, I had high hopes for kind of where the market was headed. But now with this trade war, a lot of that optimism has dimmed and you'll see, I think, more of those folks unfortunately having no choice but to either permanently or temporarily idle those fleets. So I think as that comes together, I don't think we're seeing rocket ship plus 40% growth anymore. But I also don't think that there's a case for rates going much lower. So, we're either kind of skidding at the bottom here or there's a subcase for a slow build up to say a 10-12% inflationary scenario.
Dean Croke: I had look at a cohort of 20,000 carriers, average fleet size is about 244 trucks. They'd lost 14 cents a mile last year. Um so, it kind of speaks to the pain that that sector of the industry that represents about 80% of trucks on the road, the pain they were going through. Now, they have much bigger overheads than say the owner operator smaller fleet, but they've been through a couple of years of pretty tough times. I think the only thing that's been helping a lot of carriers is declining diesel prices. Even though they've been up 24 cents a gallon in the last month, they kind of up, I think, a penny this week. That's been a little bit of a tailwind for the smaller operator. I think the and I think the bigger the fleet, the larger the exposure to crushing margins, because we're still seeing new rate development in our our contract rates in DAT's world it's about 50 billion in freight spend new rates based on recent RFPs are still coming in uh plus or minus um you know maybe plus half a percent down half a percent and they've been like that for the last year so um and then so contract rates aren't going up but they're not going down either they're kind of treading water. more alarmingly though uh dry van spot rates just flipped negative year-over-year in June So after 10 months of being marginally positive year-over-year, they've now flipped negative. And as Ken would have told you on the last show, when we see rates flip negative year-over-year, that kind of signals the start of another recessionary freight cycle. Whether that is maintained because we've got the last week of July to pump up some of our rates, you know, going forward. It doesn't bode well for the direction of rates for large carriers that are looking for some sort of revenue gain, especially on the back of a what I would call a disastrous second quarter from a profitability perspective.
David Spencer: I think some of the data hasn't really supported the cuts just yet. I think you know, if you're out there and you're seeing and you're feeling it, you know, that's one thing. I think that's why there's a big call for interest rate cuts out there. You've seen housing slow down to a real crawl. In general we're looking at interest rate cuts as an opportunity to see continued investment and continue to spark the economy in some way, shape, or form. So, I think there's excitement and interest in that I think there's conflicting views on is it time or is it not? The Fed we know typically is known for lagging when they should make those decisions a little bit mainly because of the data that they're basing their decisions on lags. I mean I do think interest rate cuts are important, but it's really the cumulative effect of cuts over time that really make a difference as opposed to, hey, here's a quarter point or half a point cut. You're not going to see that translate immediately into an impact on the economy.
But just to kind of respond if I may to some of the comments from from the others after I got a chance to speak, I think we really should be paying close attention to what's going on on the supply side because while I don't think English language proficiency is going to have a big impact, I think the investigation around non-domiciled CDLs is something we need to be watching really closely as to what impact that could have. It's a big wild card. You don't know how sweeping of changes they're going to come back with and say hey are we going to invalidate all these CDLs? You know that's something that I haven't seen off the table. We're continuing to see some of the other freight economic data I think is relevant. Equipment orders are down and trending below replacement for several months in a row. These are the things that I think point to some challenges for capacity to keep up. I think the supply side is declining and if we do see whether it's interest rate cuts or some other form of stimulus to spark the economy on the demand side, that's going to expose capacity that's been attritted.
Jason Miller: Yeah, new single family starts are down about 7.5% year over year, and existing single family home sales, they're way way way down from where they were even before COVID and then especially when we take a look let's say back in the back half of 2020 first half of 21. So ballparking it right now there's somewhere in the tune of about 4 millionish units a year right now give or take. Before COVID they would have been steadily around call it 5.4 million units a year, and then on the other side of COVID they were hovering over six million units. And so when you combine just persistent flat movement of existing single family sales and then new housing starts being down, even though existing home sales don't generate as much freight as a new single family start, it still generates a lot. People get new appliances, new furniture, all of these things, and that's just not happening right now. Prices are so high and with the 30-year mortgage rate as high as it is, which is due to the 10-year Treasury being as high as it is, we basically seem to be cutting the cycle. Even more importantly, even if the Fed lowers interest rates, the 10-year and interest rates are not mathematically linked. The 10 year is more an expectation of where participants think inflation will be. And so until market participants really believe that inflation is not going to happen, it's unlikely that we're going to see that 30-year mortgage rate come down.
Chris Picket: I think it's hard to envision a scenario where that happens this year. I think going into early next year, you have to see a pretty I think significant drop off in consumption across most kinds of goods categories. You could look at the trailing 25 or 30 years and maybe less scientific but for the last six or seven recessions there was a period of time call it two to three to four quarters where the direction of consumption slowed down. It wasn't deflation but it was slowing down well before we landed in the front end of a NBER designated recession and so the last few quarters going through kind of the post COVID correction you look at the direction of that consumption line is one of the the first things I look at where until it bends lower you know you can't start that clock for two to three quarters before you expect a recession, and it hasn't bended lower yet. The big surprise for me the last you know couple quarters where you had the big surge during the COVID years where we went out and kind of bought everything at least all the goods because we couldn't consume services, helicopter money fanning those flames, as that corrected lower we didn't plunge into a consumer recession it kind of bottomed out call it 2-2.3% it's since kind of returned course to high twos up to kind of plus 3.1% so I think looking at that just kind of where that's pointed going into at some point a rate reduction phase, whether that's September or a month or two later it's hard to envision a scenario where even if that inflation really starts to bite that you see that much of a pullback. So especially given all the headwinds that consumers have withstood even the last couple of years whether it's your runaway inflation high interest rates, resumption of student loan payments I think everyone's predicting a fall off the consumer for the last you know two years and it hasn't happened yet so my sense is that the current administration I think will thread some type of a needle here and we'll see kind how it plays out where you I think there's a reason we waited till now to announce the next kind of shots fired where equity markets at an all-time high labor markets are still strong even if the last kind of print was somewhat skewed by strengthening you know government employment and so I don't think the administration has any intent of plunging US into a recession. I think we'll thread some version of a needle so I mean I'm overall still pretty bullish on the US consumer and kind of where this goes.
Dean Croke: Used equipment is an interesting one. There had been some demand for low mileage used equipment with the 2027 pre-by that now has sort of dissipated somewhat. That led to a higher percentage of freight moving in private fleets and less on for higher truckloads. That's sort of one of the contributing factors. According to ACT research, that's gone away now in terms of the pre-by emphasis on buying pre 2027 trucks. So, I still see strong demand for smaller operators, owner operators looking to trade up to a low mileage used truck with a little bit of warranty left in it. So, I think there's still some upward price pressure on that side of the market. We're still seeing people want to get into this industry, which if you'd asked me in January, I'd have said you're nuts. Like, what are you looking at? People are still wanting to join this industry, which is kind of baffling. But, we're in strange times. We're for the first time in a sort of really bifurcated industry when you talk about where carriers are at. I think someone mentioned floor price, where rates are at. I think Chris might have mentioned that. We're certainly there, but for the first time ever, I've seen a cohort of carriers that can run for $1.50 a mile today and still make 60 grand a year, and on the more profitable end, if they've been smart and paid off their equipment during the pandemic, and they run for $1.50 a mile and they haul freight in our Midwest bellwether states, our 13 states in the Midwest where the rates are averaging $1.92 and they've got a DAT1 fuel card, they're making the equivalent of 42 grand a year, which is better than 2018. So I think we're in very interesting times. I do think though that the majority of carriers on the higher end of the operating cost have left the industry and what we're left with is a cohort of carriers that are profitable in the sense they're breaking even, getting by, paying the bills. They're not making substantial profit. But I wanted to back that up by saying that when I said at the start of the show, carriers don't need to go anywhere. This idea that carriers have to exit the industry for financial reasons, it just doesn't exist at the moment. It doesn't make sense economically short of some sort of a geopolitical catastrophe where diesel prices hit 5.80 over the summer. Again, that would be one thing that might cause a supply side inflection point in the industry. But the likelihood of that given how diesel prices have behaved in the last couple of years seems fairly remote.
David Spencer: I’ll stick with I think we're going to see rates kind of move along at flat year-over-year here as we get into the early part of next year. I mean, obviously pending any kind of wild card from this administration or change, which is certainly possible, or like I mentioned before, any wild card as it pertains to these non-domiciled CDLs or some aspect that could affect capacity in the marketplace. So, I think we're going to see stability for a while. Short-lived volatility is certainly on the table as Chris mentioned, whether that's tariff on again off again environments or you see these little bouts of seasonal demand, right? But outside of those short-lived periods of volatility, I think overall we're talking about mostly stable conditions on a year-over-year basis.
Chris Pickett: I think I made the point earlier and I'm sticking to it. I think yeah I think all those you know headwinds are in play no doubt but I still think there's a case based on a combination of supply side and demand side effects of you know spot linehaul rates still floating up to a plus 10-15% year-over-year range about 12-13% move from here. It certainly won't be linear right by any means and maybe that's you helped along by by a storm or two or or something unpredictable in terms of geopolitical risk or something improves diesel and then contract linehaul fading kind of behind it, more of a kind of a plus 3-4%. So, I think it's stable to slightly up unless we get one of those shocks.
Jason Miller: I'm in the same boat as we're probably neutral, maybe slight increase, spot rates 4-5% year-over-year. Nothing like I was forecasting six, seven months ago when I was saying 20% up year-over-year. I don't see that happening.
Dean Croke: Flat year over year. Shippers still have pricing power. I think they'll have pricing power well into next year, maybe spring of next year before we see any sort of rate inflection of a meaningful level. I think large carriers are still chasing rates down. They're still trying to hold on to volume by decreasing their rates. They're still still trying to find where equilibrium is. I don't think they're even close to that yet. Look, especially reefer and flatbed, new rates coming into routing guides in reefer and flatbed are still single digit negative, have been for two years. So I see excess capacity in reefer flatbed large contract carriers. Spot market's a little bit different. I think it'll be flat year-over-year largely because of the economics that we sort of covered a bit earlier that there's a lot of carriers out there now, a much bigger cohort this rate cycle that are extremely profitable, as in they have very low levels of debt compared to previous cycles.
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Dean Croke: Yeah, I don't think so. I think we may have seen peak season especially on the import side but I think we'll see strong seasonality rate directionally wise in reefer, flatbed and dry van they've already started the July August slide south this week.
Dean Croke: Brake Check Week end of August.
Jason Miller: Yep. November December tightening. I will say storms get overblown. A former doctoral student of mine has done some research on this. Harvey moved the needle a very little bit, but you got to go back to Katrina to really have a meaningful impact. And we had a devastating storm this last year in Milton and didn't really move the needle. So storms don't really have the impact they're perceived to actually have.
Chris Picket: Anytime the market's at equilibrium, which I think we all agree it roughly is, you're always going to be more vulnerable to whatever the shock is, whether it's a storm or something else, even if it's short-lived. So, I think the risk for the market spiking even if short duration is much different now than it was, 12 to 24 months ago when we were down in the trough.
Samantha: So, it sounds like maybe with the absence of what used to be a traditional peak, we kind of keep an eye on storms, brake check week, and then tariffs of course because each time we've seen change or an announcement in a tariff We've seen a little bit of a a bump in imports and what that does to move into inventories. But nothing obviously the market at equilibrium hasn't adjusted to and then come back down and handled thus far. I would be personally shocked to see bumps in imports be significantly larger than what we've already seen as well.
Dean Croke: Probably the opposite in California, right? Which 50% of the imports come from China. Volumes are down 30% year-over-year. So, there's some structural damage to the dray market, warehouse market, 3PL market in the state of California. You know, for a long time, as goes California, so does the rest of the country. Not so anymore. And particularly not so in produce.
Chris Picket: We definitely haven't seen the freight apocalypse air pocket, right? That was, you know, reported wildly out there for for a hot minute once the the trade war started.
David Spencer: My main advice is to follow everybody here on this panel and their regular content whether that's Jason's daily post, Chris's monthly report, Dean's weekly show or Samantha's podcast. I think you're going to get a lot of information there. Flexibility in your network, pay attention to what's going on, know your cost structure, and be smart with decisions. I'll leave it at that.
Chris Picket: The rate relief is coming, right, but it's not coming nearly as fast for a lot of folks that are out there. So, there's been a lot of progress over the last year or two around automation, taking cost out, you know, doing more with less. So, I don't think that stops. Keep doing what you're doing. I think on the shipper side, don't get complacent. You're going to have some optionality and it'll still be a shipper market for some period of time, but it won't last forever. So, if that means investing in other modes or reallocating capacity or doing something different in terms of the routing guide, I think you don't get complacent. You know, things will change at some point.
Jason Miller: You've got to plan for different scenarios. You've got to have a best case, you've got to have a worst case, you've got to have a middle case scenario. So, that's number one. And number two, it's again, it's finding those efficiencies. If you're a carrier, it's about the economies of scope across hauls, getting deadhead minimized, trying to cement those relationships with key contract shippers to get balanced networks. For brokers, it's playing the game, knowing the market better than your rivals. For shippers, I hate to say it, but it's kind of just the same old same old, but always remember this market will eventually turn. And if you act opportunistic now, carriers will remember when that time comes to get their revenge.
Dean Croke: Two things I think for carriers in particular: slow down, look for new opportunities. This is going to be a matter of saving pennies the rest of the year in terms of economic survival speeds. One of the biggest things with diesel at around 30% of your operating cost. So that's absolutely critical. Uh any margins profitability I think this year will come through cost reductions. But the more important thing I think is to work with people like David in particular to build relationships, try new things. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and venture out into territories that you haven't been before because I see structural change in this industry in terms of how freight's moving and I don't know that we can rely on past freight patterns to dictate where we think the market's going at a carrier level. I think you need to have really good partnerships with good people like David to make sure you're in the right place at the right time.
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Trimble Inc. has their annual Insight conference in New Orleans Nov. 16-18th! Their Summer Sizzle promotion is about to start and will save you money! From July 14 - 25, use code SIZZLE25 at registration to save! https://trimble.swoogo.com/insight25-event/registration
Discount to save $200 on your Manifest: The Future of Supply Chain & Logistics registration! ManifestVegas.com/MeetMeForCoffee
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