'There's no freight, no freight at all.' Thousands of small trucking companies that move the vast majority of the goods in U.S. freight markets are heavily exposed to a deepening downturn.
By Jennifer Smith April 21, 2020 1:01 pm ET Tony Singh has spent much of the past month working the phones to find shipments to get his trucks back on the road. So far, the owner of a small Richmond, Va.-based trucking company has come up dry.Loads that would have paid $1,000 last month, when a rush to restock grocery stores briefly lifted business, now fetch $300 or less, he said.
Trucking companies with six or fewer trucks made up more than 90% of the carriers in the nearly $800 billion U.S. trucking market in 2018, the most recent year for which figures were available, according to industry group the American Trucking Associations. Omaha, Neb.-based Werner Enterprises Inc. said last week that Chief Executive Derek Leathers would take a 25% cut in base salary, with other executives reducing pay by up to 15%, the company said in a filing.
Truckers that aren’t moving food, medical supplies or other essential items “are sucking wind,” said Jeff Tucker, chief executive of Haddonfield, N.J.-based freight broker Tucker Company Worldwide Inc. That business is drying up. Demand measured by the ratio of loads to trucks fell 68% to 0.91 for the week ending April 19 from the week of March 29, leaving more trucks looking to move freight than available loads, according to online freight marketplace DAT Solutions LLC. The average spot market price for booking a big rig fell to $1.72 per mile including fuel in the first three weeks of April, down 8% from the average during March.
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