Christmas and New Year’s are behind us, and we hope you all had a great holiday season. I know we are excited for the new year to come. With a new COVID variant in the news, it appears we are starting the year with a surge. The omicron variant seems to be less severe according to the current news and reports. There are still discussions of industries like airlines, amusement parks and cruise ships requiring COVID immunizations for adults and children.
Demand for trucking has remained high and it appears we may have a new record first quarter in the shipping industry. We do not anticipate demand will slack and we are encouraging all of our customers to ship everything they can now in case rates increase even more sometime later this year. We do not anticipate rates will fall this year but will stay stable and/or possibly even increase. We anticipate the second quarter of this year will set the pace for the rest of the year. Drivers are keeping an eye on current increasing insurance premiums as well as the potential for fuel to climb this year. These two things coupled with strong demand could possibly cause shipping rates to climb even higher.
We are seeing pure LTL carriers double and triple their rates from 24 months ago for small shipments. This has us looking for other options for our customers who want to ship 1-6 pallets. As a result, we are finding more nontraditional means of shipping smaller quantities such as loading partials on common and contract carriers who would have been too expensive in the past. Currently, we can use this option for less money and deliver twice as fast since cross docking is not necessary. We find a lot of customers have not considered the potential damage that can happen to their freight when it will be off loaded and then loaded again when using LTL carriers. Also, it’s a speedier delivery without cross docking and wait times. If this sounds like something, you would like to know more about please give us a call.
We look forward to working with everyone this year and we hope your year is off to a great start!