A healthier trucking industry has reflected extremely tight capacity in the truckload sector, but there may be a period of modest relief in sight, according to newly released report from the freight forecasting firm FTR
“There is a possibility for some relief of the tight truckload capacity over the next few months if freight growth slows as expected in the second quarter,” the group said in a release. “The stressed supply situation of today is caused, primarily, by regulatory drag on shipping capacity along with the winter disruptions”
Although trucking capacity will stay tight throughout 2014, “it looks like much of the supply-and-demand balance is coming back down to a more ‘normal’ level as shippers are finishing their spring freight season and the backlog of loads caused by the winter weather has largely subsided.”
Jonathan Starks, FTR’s director of transportation analysis, noted ‘normal’ remains a relative term, since the industry continues to be operating at much higher levels of utilization than in the past.
“Recent data shows a strong uptick in economic activity, but it will be hard to know if we are merely playing catch-up from a bad first quarter or if there is some real sustained growth occurring.”