Bulk rates not rising...could it be due to

All of the reasons you have listed play into it..... The other part of it is competition from the railroads and river barges. Back when I was knee high to a grasshopper, every trucking company around here, had hopper bottoms. After deregulation the number became fewer and fewer. By the end of the 80's, 95% got rid of them. Then you noticed a couple of shysters pop up, and exploit the hell out of the owner operators, until they finally exuasted that supply of cheap labor. Around this area it is considered bottom feeder work, even the foriegner' won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Typically anymore the only way to sell a company when you want to retire, is to have a auction and sell the equipment and property, and pray like hell you have enough left over to pay the capitol gains tax.

You raise a good point Nancy. Let's look at that article over in the news section that originated in Bloomberg about Tyson foods expecting to pay a additional $200 million dollars more for trucking this year, becuase of this ELD mandate. Tyson will try to pass that added cost on to the consumer, but what happens if the consumer decides to consume less as a result of that? Then Tyson will be loosing $200 million this year. What will that do to the price of their stock? And how many more Tyson stories are out there? Does anyone see a crash coming?

Just look infront or behind you most of the time the people who say they don't haul cheap are the ones getting loads to go home for 1.25 a mile we all need to stop hauling cheap but nothing going to change no one is willing to do anything about it

without a doubt this is going to drive the matgins down and the shareholders will not have a choce but to take that dive with it. you can only suck so much blood from the market expense rock coupled with a fair market price to the consumer.

The best answer yet.

The government's worst nightmare is about to happen. They have lost control over the truckers, the rates keep going up, and yet drivers continue to quit. Shippers and brokers are now fighting over trucks, and a bidding war has broken out. Some have doubled or tripled rates, and there are no trucks to be found, it is now discussed daily in the news cycle, from CBS to Bloomberg there are stories of shippers begging for mercy, at the slowest time of the year for trucking. The economy it seems is now in a chokehold, and any future economic growth is now constrained by what many shippers are already calling the worst transportation crisis they have ever seen. And on Wall Street it has spread fear of mass inflation and higher interest rates. There are fears that many shippers may not be able to get their products to market as spring time grows near, and America's farmers who are still struggling to cope with last year's losses, are expected to see higher costs from seed to fertilizer, and everything in between. At the heart of it all, is the controversial ELD mandate, that The ATA aggressively promoted............... It is now commonly referred to as the Death sentence mandate, by many small businesses owners, who struggle desperately to find trucks.

That will be about the same time that the ELD or me folks all go on vacation, road construction really kicks off, and the farmers park their trucks, and start planting their crops. Hymmmmm.