In Gear - Today's Trucking

simistic observers warn of
a ‘W’-shaped trend. No,
that doesn’t mean the last
U.S. president is coming
back to politics, but perhaps
a double-dip recession
could be in the cards.
At the Ontario Trucking
Association’s (OTA) annual
conference late last year, a
few more economists and
freight transport execs
took their turn at stirring
the pot of predictions (for
our own alphabetized forecasts,
check out pg. 28).
John Larkin, a respected
freight market analyst with
Stifel Nicolaus, pitches
camp with the majority
who say that both the
American and Canadian
economies have touched
bottom, but recovery
will be elongated and
painfully slow.
Many macro economic
indicators that spell out the
U.S. economy are still evolving—consumer
demand,
credit availability, rising
unemployment, future
taxes and national debt—
clouding the long-term
forecast for freight haulers,
including those involved in
Canada’s export-based
economy, Larkin noted.
One thing’s for sure,
though, “just because volumes
are higher doesn’t
mean customers aren’t
asking for, or getting, discounts,”
he says. Overall,
“pricing across the board
has never been this bad.
It’s flat out miserable.”
ROADSIDE VIEW
Those conclusions were
not at all inconsistent with
what most Canadian fleet
owners experienced these
last 12 months, nor what
they expect for 2010.
Dispatches
A panel of about a dozen
large and small carrier
bosses led a state-of-theindustry
discussion. On the
agenda: Whether the recession
has changed how they
do business; if current conditions
will alter shipping
patters indefinitely; the
role of enforcement in the
21st century and, of course,
rate cutting.
The execs felt that on
par, a decent percentage of
carriers have done a reasonably
good job cutting
capacity in a bottom-feeding
rate environment.
Dave Pogue of smallish
fleet EG Gray Trans -
portation says that “it’s not
that big a deal” to park
paid-for trucks along the
fence. “If you owe on every
piece of equipment, it’s
obviously not as easy to do,
but don’t be afraid to park
trucks you own if the rate
means it’s not going to
make any money.”
Still, while some
established carriers shed
capacity, even more who
have little grasp of their
own costs continue to
depress rates.
MSM Transportation’s
Mike McCarron and Bruno
Muller of Edmonton-based
liquid bulk hauler Caron
Transportation didn’t hold
back in their criticisms of
lenders and leasing companies’
lax treatment of
underperforming carriers.
Rather than take back
equipment of debt-ridden
truckers at 25 cents on the
dollar, financial institutions
have given poorer operators
lifelines at the expense of
their competitors who pay
their bills.
“There’s guys out there
running around for free,”
JANUARY 2010 15