Trucking and logistics executives at National Industrial Transportation League\u2019s 2020 Summit discussed the contract environment, trucking capacity, truck parking, driver retention, delivery demands and hours-of-service regulations.<\/p>\n
With a down market in 2019 behind them, the execs were unanimous in being cautiously optimistic in 2020, despite prevailing challenges, reports Freightwaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously 2019 was a challenging market to say the least, and I\u2019m glad it\u2019s in the rearview mirror from a truckload operator perspective,\u201d said Justin Harness, chief marketing officer of U.S. Xpress. \u201cIt\u2019s still to be determined what 2020 shakes out to be \u2014 I do believe we will see some inflection in the supply-and-demand equilibrium at some point midyear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with Harness, other panelists included David Marsh, chief operating officer of Celtic Intermodal; Travis Krous, director of transportation for Nestl\u00e9 Purina; Jeff Tucker, CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide; and Mark Willis, host of the Road Dog Trucking show on Sirius XM radio.<\/p>\n
Tucker also said the freight marketplace could be nearing an equilibrium of supply and demand, but it\u2019s still a wait-and-see situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see the marketplace beginning to transition and stratify, and because we\u2019ve got these visibility tools, prices aren\u2019t coming down quite as much as you would expect in high-service scenarios,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cYou can\u2019t afford it, you can\u2019t afford to be late.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsh said it does seem like the market \u201chas hit the bottom\u201d in terms of rates. \u201cThe good news from an intermodal perspective is that the services responded very nicely and a lot of customers said they enjoyed the services we provided,\u201d Marsh said.<\/p>\n
Krous said Nestl\u00e9 Purina tries to work with its carriers by being a \u201cshipper of choice<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs everyone knows, carriers have struggled to find drivers. So what is it that we can do to help them keep the drivers and retain the drivers? We can do things like parking at our facility,\u201d Krous said. \u201cSo we allow parking at our facilities. We don\u2019t advertise it. We don\u2019t want a bunch of trucks just showing up and parking there But we\u2019re not going to kick you off the lot. Those kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n Krous said they have also looked at providing Wi-Fi for drivers at Nestl\u00e9 facilities, as well as making invoicing and payments easier.<\/p>\n