Golf Update, Horse Hooky July 11,
Social Media, Transportation Rates
It is June 2023 so time for the next Al’s Corner note.
Update of the Spring Golf outing. Well, over one hundred players and volunteers attended, which was played this time at The Links at Dardenne in O’Fallon, MO. Again, Brad Reinhardt provided The St. Louis Transportation Club with a new, and outstanding venue. His merry group of volunteers did an outstanding job of providing drinks, snacks,50-50 tickets, and silliness as always. The Booze Tent (great!) is brought to you by Amy Bea and Michael Tobin. Amanda Foust, Anna Hickman, Miranda Theis (never give her a megaphone), Brad, Mike Burke, and so many others were awesome. It was great fun, networking, and some tremendous golf. Thank you so much, everyone.
July 11 is the quirky, fun, and hopefully financially rewarding “Horse Hooky!” Again, we will be at FanDuel Park, or the former Fairmount Park, in Collinsville, IL. See you around 1 pm. Pick the Grey Horse to win every time!
This month’s 1st topic—Be careful with social media—in my lifetime I have seen a lot in business. I have seen businesses fail, and grow from nothing like Amazon, and so on. I generally like Facebook, to stay in touch with others, provide insight into my life, say happy birthday, celebrate anniversaries and events in someone’s life, look at travel photos, career highlights, or post about walking 10,000 steps every day for years. You get it. Others use social media to sell products, market things, and promote real, fake, and mean stuff. With this monthly blog, I write I try and mention topics that are regional, like anything St. Louis, or national. Kind of like a Midwest time capsule type of note. No taking sides ever, and no political stuff either. But one thing now that is very clear, be very careful what you do, and say on social media. Personally, and business-wise, I don’t really do much on it. Today almost anyone can get information to the entire world in seconds. Sometimes it can be great, sometimes not.
Experience helps in understanding transportation, which is what I discuss most of the time. It has always been a series of cycles. Fifty percent of the time the rates favor the shippers because it is their freight that makes everything go. The other times are flat market or carrier market. Both the shippers and the carriers affect how long it stays as a shipper or carrier market.
Example: when it is a shipper market (now) shippers push for low rates relentlessly. Kind of like you got me last year, my turn. This causes carriers to leave the market, and seek better incomes, and ultimately reduces capacity. Fewer trucks cause higher rates resulting in a carrier market. Then carriers add capacity in order to take advantage of high rates, which again causes rates to drop. This results back into a shipper’s market. History and experience tell us about this back and forth and is very predictable. The only difference I saw with the last 4 years was shippers complained about high carrier costs, but they too raised their rates to offset the higher carrier rates. So, I think rates will be rising next year, how much, not sure. But in the next 2 years, I am confident this will happen. I think this will be more of a flat market, though. We are getting back to more normal times.
Big Thank You—-This country is still the best in the history of the world. We have had millions of people give up their lives to protect us and keep it going. Thank you to all that have served in our military and are still doing it (Memorial Day).
Have a great month, AL