Fall, as we head into the holiday season, tends to be the biggest and most profitable season for the trucking industry. So we were surprised when fall 2015 turned out to be as soft as it was. What does 2016 hold? Only time will tell but according to this article at Material Handling & Logistics, it may be trending up.
Motor carrier executives remain optimistic that 2016 will bring solid growth for their companies, according to a new study by TCP. This optimism overrides economic events in the 4th quarter of 2015 that saw growth expectations at their lowest levels in over 5 years.
The really interesting thing to me was, that in the article there is a graph showing at different points along the timeline whether industry leaders thought the industry’s rates would rise, decrease, or stay about the same. And to me it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the graph. The graph says, to me, that people are less optimistic than they were a year ago… However,
“We are seeing more variation in the opinions of individual carriers than in prior years,” notes Richard Mikes, TCP partner. “Any further tightening, caused by a small increase in demand or driver shortages, will have a proportionally greater upward impact on spot and contract rates.”
As I said above, time will tell.
Thanks for reading.