Results from the final quarter of 2022 are in for the latest Bloomberg | Truckstop.com survey of owner-operators and small fleets about business conditions. Declining trucking conditions in some ways represent fertile ground for double-brokering scams, which appear to be back in full force after a holiday lull.
As any Overdrive reader who's experienced the topsy-turvy ride in the spot market the last year or so will know well, “spot rates are not in-line with the higher costs facing carriers, which is weighing on owner-operators' profits,” said Lee Klaskow, senior freight transportation and logistics analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “We expect the market to continue to rebalance with rates improving as early as 2Q."
In other words, Klaskow's hopeful for a Spring freight season akin to those in the good ol' days of yore -- we haven't really seen a typical Spring uptick in rates since (maybe) 2019, and maybe not even then. COVID spiked Spring freight in 2020, then 2021 was on a generally upward trend throughout almost the entire year, while last year rates jumped early with fuel then took a dive until more or less leveling out in the Fall.
This week's FTR Transportation Intelligence/Truckstop.com spot market update snapshot shows the last years' trends to an extent, with top numbers showing week-over-week moves in metrics for the seven days ending this past Sunday:
As noted in the weekly report, rates have been falling overall since the holiday surge in December, though
The rates situation has declined such that there's ripe opportunity for scams featuring too-good-to-be-true rates that everyone should be on the lookout for. Just this morning, I spoke with an owner-operator marooned in the Texas ice storm chasing payment on a $2,500 load he booked with what, in retrospect, is looking like a classic brokerage identity-theft case -- the flatbed load was moved at an offered rate of around $6.70/mile.
[Related: What can you do when a freight broker doesn't pay?]
