As I sit here and wonder what to focus on in this week’s T4C commentary I can’t help but think ‘what’s really going on?’. I’m sure that there were notable, real-world actions that occurred over the last few days, but I can’t seem to find them. With so much oxygen being sucked up by what’s… Read More »
Continued Strength in Economic Data Anyone in the business of forecasting, supply chain management, trucking or logistics have been wondering when we were going to see a peak to this mountain of positive economic data we’ve been seeing dating back to late 2017. We’re experiencing capacity constraints like never before and the Market Demand Index… Read More »
Truck Orders on a Tear After weaker truck conditions that persisted through most of 2016, 2017 was a much better year and truck orders finished the year very strong. And then 2018 hit. January orders hit a near-record level and they stayed above 40k orders in February. Those are big numbers. That we had a… Read More »
Wait…This is the slow time for the shipping industry? Today we’re going to take a look at one of the metrics you see on a weekly basis, the Market Demand Index. The MDI was designed to give us a high level gauge of the supply and demand of the trucking industry. An MDI between 15… Read More »
Only once in the last decade have we had January spot market rates come in above December. That was at the start of 2014 when we also had a strong December increase in rates and we were coming off the HOS implementation at the end of 2013. Well, we can now add a second. Not… Read More »
Recent webinars in the FTR State of Freight series have focused on the outcomes for economic growth in 2018, along with a discussion of some of the inherent risks. Overall, the consensus is that the economic outlook looks healthy for 2018. In addition to getting the valuable opinions of FTR’s Industry Experts, we also like to… Read More »
At the beginning of November we got the ISM Manufacturing Index results for last month that showed that the strong manufacturing segment is continuing. In the middle of last month we got the official September Industrial Production results from the Federal Reserve. While August was notably negative, the September numbers were once again in the… Read More »
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau announced the September full report on manufacturers shipments, inventories and orders which is a reliable barometer on the health of the economy reporting the month to month change in new orders for manufactured goods. Strong Demand Overall, September orders came in at an increase of $6.5 billion, or 1.4%,… Read More »
We have our first week of data suggesting that the trucking market is returning to “normal”. The Market Demand Index (see graph below) saw a notable drop in week 41 after a very small decline in the prior week; however, market conditions are still significantly tighter than we saw last year (up 153% y/y). That… Read More »
After presenting to a group of restaurant chain and food service procurement and logistics professionals last week a couple of points stood out. Here’s the quick takeaway: Spot Rates have recovered, now it’s contract’s turn. Spot Rates Have Recovered. Now it’s Contract’s Turn. The chart above gave heartache to those in attendance. The pricing… Read More »