Spot market: Signs of life for van, reefer rates as typical June uptick approaches?
Rates were higher on 54 of the top 100 van lanes compared to the previous week and the national average van load-to-truck ratio rose from 1.6 to 1.8. There are encouraging signs, but that’s still below expectations for the time of the year.
Owner-operator Chuck Kumalaa on his decision to stay out through the holiday weekend
You’ve just found out that your electronic load confirmation with a delivery appointment for today was bunk because the business is shut down for Memorial Day. What do you do? And: Why owner-operator Chuck Kumalaa stayed out this weekend knowing in adv…
When changing lanes, don’t forget to think differently
Quick-changing freight conditions affect carriers large and small, and faster than they ever did before as tech greases the change skids. The people who are going to adjust best, as has always been the case, will be independent thinkers with high-level…
Runaway recounted down Sandstone Mountain, and: Revisiting a quite accurate spot rate prediction pre-ELDs
Podcast: Lee Epling urges caution pointing the finger at this or that cause, or piling on the driver, before all the facts are known in the Colo. crash case, sharing his own brake-failure story on Sandstone Mountain in W.Va./Va. on I-64; Also: Monte Wi…
Though spot rates remained flat, the last week saw demand dynamics change favorably as volumes grew
Posted load counts grew by a percent, while the number of available trucks fell 4%. There still was plenty capacity to meet demand, though, as national average spot rates ended the last full week of April at or below their averages for the month of Mar…
What Isaac Ho did to prepare for the rates crash on the spot market
The past year’s fortune — and recent rates struggles, with so many others in spot freight — for one young own-authority business, with a keen eye toward controlling costs to get through any lean times. No. 1 action taken: He paid off his used-purcha…
Round-up: When a negative for investors is a positive for drivers, and early look at fully-electric Mack truck
Driver pay is bringing more cost to carriers, and that’s a good thing. Take the good with the bad, though: Freight outlook for the year, judging by the past few, isn’t great. Also: Mack’s first LR all-electric refuse truck goes to NYC sanitation, brief…
Spring has not sprung, to say the least, when it comes to vans, reefers on the spot market
National average spot van and refrigerated freight rates slipped again during the week ending April 13. The number of load posts fell 4 percent while truck posts increased. The arrival of produce season in several southern markets failed to make up for…
Truck posts up, spot rates flat in the last week
But not for flatbed, which gained 6 cents per mile as a national average rate. Spot volume fell 2 percent during the week ending April 7, while a 9 percent increase in available capacity in the form of trucks posted kept van and refrigerated rates from…
Cargo van hauling: Operating with authority, and the ‘multicarrier’ model
With few owner-ops operating with authority in the expedited niche, around the time of the Great Recession many van drivers were desperate for any way to stay loaded. A multicarrier model arose in which van owner-operators essentially negotiate loads i…