Let’s start with the good news first: Freight transportation is a “shippers market” for the remainder of this year. Indeed, shippers are the fleeting beneficiaries of a brief lull in the ever-rising costs of business logistics.
However, according to the “27th Annual State of Logistics Report” (SoL) recently issued by A.T. Kearney and sponsored by Penske Logistics and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, these market conditions will simply not last. This is due to the confluence of one-time factors that are now favoring shippers, including bloated inventories, a strong U.S. dollar hampering exports, and a sudden surge in extra capacity—especially in the $300 billion for-hire truckload market.