As stores prepare themselves for the buying season, most of the need freight has already been transported by service providers and placed in warehouses across the nation, following the peak in imports we had back in August. Yet indeed, retailers are approaching the holidays a little differently this year.
First, they’re anticipating seeing even more buying online this period, and also this week consists of online sales by major merchants like Amazon.com, Walmart, and Target. All their products are already in warehouses, so we saw area market demand decrease recently. However, this demonstrates how sellers anticipate an earlier and extra prolonged holiday purchasing season, with more products ideal for shipping or pick-up.
As even more people spend even more time in the house during the pandemic for studies, jobs, and amusement, digital tools’ needs have increased. Global deliveries of TVs struck a historic high in the 3rd quarter of this year. According to Trendforce, international TV shipments were just over 62m in the third quarter, of which 31% (19 million) were shipped to the US. Of those delivered, 63% came from China, and 65% of that volume landed in Los Angeles.
This is just one instance of just how the pandemic has boosted the need for certain assets and driven vital truckload quantities greater in specific markets, as well as it is set to proceed well into 2021. For truckers, this all will likely indicate an extension of what we’ve seen for the past five months– tight capacity and a high need for fast-moving consumer goods and slow-moving demand in the industrial manufacturing industry.
Van patterns
The October 2020 launch of the Michigan State College For-Hire Trucking Ton-Mile Index for August 2020 highlights a 0.4% m/m increase, although overall volumes were still down 2.7% year-over-year. Partner Teacher J. Miller at the Eli Broad University of Business noted, “while our index is much more bullish than ATA and Cass for the recovery of trucking demand, it strengthens several independent information points that indicate total demand is still down; year-over-year.”
In terms of capacity, the MSU launch suggested that the Trucking Capacity Tightness Index record high degrees in August. Yet, unlike early 2018, capacity tightness in late 2020 is driven by a decrease of trucking work in contrast to solid annual gains sought after.
In the top 10 freight markets, which account for 23% of total posts, load quantity was down 14% last week. Apparent volume decreases were recorded in Memphis (placed # 1 recently), where abundance comes by 2% w/w followed by Atlanta (# 2) down 17% w/w. On the West Coast in Los Angeles (# 3) and Ontario, CA (# 5) markets, many messages went down 16% and 20% w/w, respectively. Offered ability relieved a little, with outgoing rates decreasing by 1% to an average.
