I’m not big on regulations either, but how do you keep the “pukes” out? They are in it just long enough to **** up the market and there is a never ending stream of them.
The Internet has been the best and worst thing for the spot market.
On one hand it’s fuel efficiency in transportation, but on the other it has allowed the pukes to thrive because of the ease of finding freight and the destruction of the need for relationships.
You can’t keep them out. Never have, never will. It’s part of being deregulated.
The industry has always dealt with it, but it was enhanced a couple years ago when we seen rates better than most have ever seen rates, along with a demand for trucks like has never been seen before.
We were getting adjusted to a normal. 2019 saw a drop in rates, failures of many poorly run companies, and a leveling off toward the end is the year and into 2020 that was resulting in better rates than 2019, but not quite where we were in 2018.
Coronavirus jacked it all up. Now, we deal with a severe drop in rates, which will result in very tight capacity and higher rates in the near future. It’s very possible that we will see rates higher than 2018. Very possible. When that happens, we are gonna get another wave of new entrants and expansion of existing carriers. That will bring another 2019 type drop before things level off again.
All this is out the window if we get hit with another nationwide shutdown of the economy. I pray that doesn’t happen.
The only thing that takes this roller coaster away is regulation. That regulation would prevent people like me from having my own authority, or make it almost impossible.
All we can do is make hay while the sun is shining, and be good business people and put profits back during those times just for times like we are currently in.
Right now, we should be operating on money that was made 6 months to a year ago, not depending on the rates we are getting right now. Normally, that is what I would be doing. This caught me by surprise, and I wasn’t fully prepared thanks to using that business money to get into a new house. I took the risk, now I will struggle for a short while.