Fun while it lasts - The end of tight capacity is coming soon

摘要

For the first time in more than a decade, truckload carriers substantially jumped prices and made them stick. This is in addition to already charging customers higher transportation costs in the form of fuel surcharges, which often exceed 25 cents a mile. How high have transportation rates jumped in the last year? No one knows for sure. In part, it's a matter of definition. Suppose a carrier had insisted on high rates in a particular lane with a particular shipper. Because of this rate, the shipper never offered the carrier a load in that lane. Yet during the height of the capacity crunch last fall, the shipper probably asked the carrier with the high lane rate to haul loads. No rate increase took place, but the shipper's cost of moving freight went up. In addition, many carriers adopted the practice of offering to deadhead a truck in from a distant market, if the shipper would pay for those miles. Again, the shipper's rates didn't go up, but transportation costs sure did.