LTL Freight News

Truckers have been hit with many blows recently, including the hours of service changes, higher operating costs from aging fleets, and insurance requirements. The aforementioned items have done nothing but hamper the situation when it comes to the driver shortage in the trucking market. Rates are going to have to rise in order to help even out the demand, or else there will be continual backlogs of freight and service issues. Something has to give. Yesterday, the American Trucking Association released that the For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased by 1.3% in July. The ATA's Chief Economist, Bob Costello noted “The solid tonnage number in July fits with the strong factory output reading and a jump in housing starts for the same month. I continue to expect moderate, but good, tonnage growth for the rest of the year.” The railroads are seeing the benefit of the driver shortage, but that still doesn't do away with the need for the drivers once the rail is at the unloading destinat...

According to the American Association of Railroads, the intermodal volume increased 5.9% year-to-date for all of North America to 10.3 million trailers and containers through the week of August 9th. T he Georgia Ports Authority reported that the container volume at the Port of Savannah reached a record level in July. "Container trade increased to 293,889 20-foot equivalent units at the port, surpassing the record set in May by almost 3,500 units."  The Georgia Ports Authority stated that this was a 19.2% increase year-over-year.  The GPA Executive Director said in a statement: “Improved confidence among U.S. retailers, newly added port customers and shifting cargo from U.S. West to East Coast are all fueling the growing cargo volumes at Georgia’s deep water ports.” Per the  Intermodal Association of North America in a report last week, the  Southeast came in with a 12.9% growth rate, but with just a little over 200,000 shipments it had the lowest total of overall...

LTL carriers typically make modifications to their base rates yearly through the form of a General Rate Increase (GRI). Historically speaking, these increases occur once a year, but there have been years where there were none passed along and there have been years where there have been more than one. These increases are given with multiple factors taken into account, including but not limited to the economy and the carrier’s network and current operating ratio. An important thing to remember with GRI’s is that the announced increase reflects only the average rate increase across all lanes combined. It’s a weighted average. It isn’t necessarily indicative of the true impact the GRI will have on a shipper’s total freight costs since it’s not a flat percent increase across the board. And yes, this can work both ways for individual lanes. The impact may be less than what’s announced in some lanes, and it may be a lot higher in others. The takeaway here is that a shipper could be seri...