As a part of the logistics industry where you have to depend on the transportation of goods, in recent times, you have surely experienced the prevalence of freight shipment delays that has become widespread over the past year. To think of it, several factors determine the current tension found in the transportation market, especially because it affects the supply chain, and that includes truck drivers who are available, the weather having a ripple effect, the increase seen in consumer demand, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How is Government Stimulus an Extraordinary Event that Creates Freight Demand
Along with the fact that 2020-2021 has been a year filled with unpredictable events, the truck market of today’s time is about to receive additional freight from around three stimulus packages. While the amount of freight isn’t clear yet, the models are working to involve government, commercial, and consumer spending.
Demand growth, for instance, doesn’t have the same constraint as that of supply because the latter cannot grow at the same level based on structural limitations. Given this situation, the order backlog of the brand-new truck supply is increasing and will only be delivered somewhere in the middle of 2022.
The Current Condition of Trucking Market
Since the onset of 2020, the North American surface transportation marketplace has been oversupplied. The unintended result of COVID-19 on the federal relief funds and other issues due to the health concerns of the pandemic has ultimately resulted in the reduction of around 94,600 trucking jobs, as per BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Some other factors that contribute to the present state of the trucking labour market include (but is not limited to):
- The US is still down -3% on trucking jobs from February 2020 to February 2021.
- LTL experiencing around 2.2% employment shortage, as compared to what January 2020 had seen.
- The key driver demographic remains in a divergent course where a rise in retirement is seen through 2025. There will be a decline in 21-year-olds all through 2023 as well.
Given the current situation and what statistics suggest, the market is expected to see an upward continued pressure on the driver compensation and bonuses needed to hold on to the expanding fleet. As an exporter, however, to keep your business supply chain from malfunctioning, you can fall back on a supply chain automation platform like Timber Exchange.
Timber Exchange is a cloud based enterprise solution for supply chain management that has been developed to address several blind spots that we are currently seeing in global trade and logistics. By complementing existing solutions, we remove trade barriers and bring transparency and automation to companies engaged in global trade.
You can also keep track of the platform to check live container tracking to see where the delays are occurring and why. The fact that you can check how every freight forwarder is performing in real-time ensures that you choose what’s best for your business deliverables, especially when you are a part of the Sweden forestry industry. Contact https://www.centersource.io/ for more information from experts.
Centersource Technologies 