LOOKING FORWARD 2010 is going to be a b*tch for a lot of people who are in this business.
To start with the present administration has forced most of the country's business sector to hold off on everything unless it is necessary because of the ambiguity of their policies and unsure message of where they want to take the country. They have yet decided on any one tax increase they want to push and want to force many companies to pay for things that is not needed or wanted - health care is one of them.
Many shippers are going to make further changes in the way they ship, the economy as much as people think is on the road to recovery is only poised to recovery to a point but will never be able to expand as it should or really needed - the government has counted on expansion from a base year of 1999 in order to pay for a lot of debt they created in the short term and pay for the cost of a number of new programs as political pay back. Expansion can't and will not come to us for many years, the underlying manufacturing base has been chipped away with the auto bailouts, the move of jobs into Mexico and so on and the debt and the interest rate that was lowered to help has hurt our overall chances for a real recovery.
A number of carriers may be faced issues just like Arrow - keeping afloat in decreasing rates - may not make it through 2010. Arrow from what I have read is example where they could not actually refi their loans and ended up going down - commercial paper, go figure.
CSA 2010 will effect everyone, not just straight truck drivers and not just the companies - but everyone. It is not a good thing as much as it is a good first step, the real issue is it is not proactive but reactive and many companies will end up on the losing end of the stick, as much as many marginal drivers. It is another thing that many think it will help but may make things worst in the long run.
What will not happen which should be a mass exodus of poor and marginal drivers outside of 2010 through the revolving door of recruiting - it seems that some training companies and carriers are ramping up efforts to get more people in their truck in anticipation of a recovery and CSA 2010. With the number of unemployed, the trucking industry is a good way to take a 6 week course (many states pay for it) and hit the road to make money to pay the bills. If the driver is a poor driver before training, he will be a poor driver in the truck and the CSA 2010 program will eventually ID him/her and they will be gone while in the mean time the carrier has another in the wings waiting.
Rates may go up, they also may go down if there is more competition for the work - there is only so much work to be had. The brokers and some carriers who don't use their own trucks to move their own freight will only appear to increase the amount of freight out there but of course it will be just a continuation of multiple postings of the same shipment by a number of brokers and carriers.
Our stuff may see more of a blur into LTL than ever before, and companies like FedEx who are diversified will have use their "expediting" groups to work the spill over from their main part of the business to save them money. Even within some carriers, like FedEx, they have internalized competition to move more freight and this has put owners/drivers in the position that they better accept what is coming to them or sit more. It is not about the owner or driver anymore as much as it is not about the customer or shipper but it is about maintaining the profit margin and the stock holders value.
For many of us in this niche market, capital expenditures may be something that needs to be held off until a good reserve is created and kept for the long haul. Managing money coupled with depression era thinking may only be the way to save many of your butts in these times - the $10 a day food allowance is already a reality for a lot of us, and if done right doesn't make us any less of a good operator or make us into some poor driver - not a bad thing as many have made it out to be.
No matter what others think, with internalized competitiveness and the lack of real control over what the company does, most don't have the real control to keep things running as they need to which leaves little control outside of watching what they spend. The key has always been to be able to work as a business with access to the work without having someone not offering you the work or worst yet having the work offered to 10 trucks at the same time.
