Its tough being a trucker AKA professional driver at the best of times. Nasty hours, and terrible working conditions. So when the freight is less than the number of trucks on the road, there is a serious problem.
Right now its hard to find freight is an understatement. My boss is freaking out and trying to save the company. Part of the problem is that shippers are trying to get the most for their buck in shipping. So they are having a price war with the truckers. The shipper is offering to pay less than what it cost most companies to carry the freight. The trucker had two options. 1. take the freight and do the business at a loss with the possibility of more freight in the future, or 2 refuse the freight with the possibility of not being offered the freight from this shipper again.
Example: shipper offers the freight @ $0.95 a kilometer to ship to x. But it costs the trucker $1.10 to do the work? How long could you operate a business losing $0.15 /k??? Would you at least not want to get 1.10 to just operate and cover you cost? The problem is that now instead of $.95 a kilometer, shippers are asking for rates like $0.85 and with fuel going and going higher its costing the trucker 1.56 or more to run the same load.
So the easy yet painful solution is that there needs to be less truckers on the road to haul the correct amount of freight. Then the hope is that with less truckers the price of freight will increase and then balance out the supply and demand of freight. One part of the solution is that you the consumer needs to make good choices on what you are buying and when.
EVERYTHING gets to you by truck.
