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The Cass Freight Index, which measures demand for trucking services, crept up 0.6 percent in March, compared to an 8.6-percent rise in February.
At the same time, spot rates for space on trucks fell 37 percent in March from the month before, according to a Bank of America (BoA) analysis.
The report also found that there was more space available in trucks in March than at any time since June 2020.
Trucking companies’ outlook for rate increases is its most pessimistic since July 2020, BoA reported.
“It’s fair to say that the days of expecting rate increases are pretty much over,” trucking analyst Avery Vice at FTR Transportation told The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s a question of just how quickly things are going to normalize,” he said. “The idea that [trucking companies] can just print money is over.”
Inflation is cutting consumer spending, COO John Luciani at trucking firm A. Duie Pyle said in a WSJ interview, and as we reported in “Consumer Spending Slows in February” (5 Apr 2022). He called first-quarter results “lackluster.”
Jason Seidl, analyst at investment bank Cowan Inc., agreed.
“The overall tone for earnings coming up on the trucking side is going to be a hefty dose of reality,” he said to the WSJ.
Share prices for trucking companies have been trending lower in recent weeks, the WSJ noted, a trend we reported in “Transportation Stocks Hit the Brakes” in this issue.
TREND FORECAST: An economic decline is in the numbers. The implications of the COVID War lockdowns and the temporary spending burst into economies as a result of trillions of dollars that were artificially pumped into economies and equities by governments and ultra-low interest rates by the Banksters… is drying up.