Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/698304
Voices channel 19 4 | Overdrive | July 2016 Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' CHANNEL 19 BLOG at OverdriveOnline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com. Surveyed in April about the biggest issues owner-operators are having with their businesses, rates in general was named as among the three top issues by six in 10 survey respondents, more than any other choice. Given demand/rate dynamics over the past year, that's no surprise. Though June finally saw some significant growth, truckload rates on the spot market have seen better days. After a good year in 2014, plunging fuel prices in early 2015 began to pull down rates. Trucking demand fell hard across all three major segments. The beginning of this year saw declines from 2015 averages for loads originating in almost every one of the 48 continental states. We charted just how much things have fallen the first four months of this year compared to 2015 averages, in percentage terms, looking at Truckstop.com's paid rates dataset, which reflects rates paid to carriers on actual loads. • Dry van: -13% Leading the fall were Northeast states in addition to some other states that arguably had the most to lose. This time last year, our Rates Hall of Fame showed the top-performing load-origin states for the good year that was 2014 on the spot market. That list included Ten- nessee (No. 1) and Georgia (No. 4), both of which declined considerably in 2015 and continued to do so in the first quarter this year, posting near 16 percent falls. Three load-origin states did show single-digit positive rate growth: Montana, South Dakota and Washington state, which led the list with a +2.2 percent boost. • Flatbed: -10.1% Flatbed rates have suffered the least in percentage terms this year. That compares to an arguably miserable 2015, with the falloff in volumes of platform freight used for oil and gas operations as the price of crude fell to "oil bust" levels, halting drilling operations. However, no load-origin states have shown posi- tive rate growth in 2016. The smallest falls (from -5 to -7 percent) have been for loads originating in South Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Missouri, New Jersey and Kansas. • Reefer: -14.8% Reefer paid rates have shown positive growth this year so far only on the small volume of loads originating in Vermont, where rates are up just a single percentage point. Darker-shaded states, where rates have shown the most stability, in- clude Maryland and New Hampshire. States where the percentage falloff has been in the single digits include Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. Otherwise, 10 percent-plus declines have been the norm. If you run in one of the many states that have a performance-based brake tester, you've likely seen one in oper- ation. Wisconsin, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida, among other states, operate one or more of the units. If you haul liquid bulk, whether in a tanker or in totes, the sloshing of the liquid as individual axles move over the PBBT's roller often produces errors in readings. If not heeded by the inspector, such errors can be compounded as the machine makes its braking force calculation. The upshot: If you're a liquid hauler and you're put out of service as a result of a PBBT measurement and the inspector clearly didn't give adequate time for the load to totally settle, you may have grounds for a DataQs challenge to the violation via FMCSA's system. Read more via the May 3 post to the blog. Brake tester problematic for liquid haulers Rates down more than 10% this year Access interactive heat maps for dry van, flatbed and reefer loads with origins in all 48 states in the May 17 post to the Channel 19 blog. The maps show where, for each segment, rates have fallen off the most — or least (indicated by the most darkly shaded states) — so far in 2016. Idaho: -18.89 Missouri: -14.88 A performance-based brake tester is designed to compute weight at each wheel end and test the brakes while the wheels are on rollers.