BestENews1218

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Freight
fretting
Motor carriers
haul most of the
freight in America,
and they are in a
state of crisis over
capacity. It’s a fact
shippers should
notice and for
which they should
account.
The report is less than sanguine.
Carrier capacity is at
a crisis point, and it’s not
lessening anytime soon, not
based on the widely anticipated
freight forecast released last
month by the American Trucking
Associations.
The trucking trade group
whose forecasts are considered
a bellwether for the industry
predicts that truck tonnage will
hit 16 billion tons this year and
balloon by more than 35 percent
to 21.7 billion tons in 2029.
Truck volumes are projected to
grow 2.3 percent annually from
next year to 2024.
Trucking’s current woes are
expected to linger. Those include
the driver shortage, e-commerce
expansion, regulatory squeezes
and a booming economy.
“[T]his is the tightest truckload
market in this century — maybe
in a generation — and it’s only
going to get worse,” John Schulz,
a veteran trucking correspondent
for Logisitics Management, told
the magazine.
Shippers who account for the
challenges carriers face now and
well into the future have the
best chance of winning on the
bottom line, says Reo Hatfield,
BestTransport’s chief operating
executive. “That’s where we
come in,” he said, “Contact us
today, and we’ll see to it you get
through this.”
december 2018 3