This year, Stephanie Rider has responded to an abnormally high volume of bid requests.
“Everyone is looking at making changes. Shippers want lower prices,” says Rider, a rate analyst for Syfan Transport and Syfan Logistics. As a carrier, Syfan has 125 trucks based in Gainesville, Ga., with expedited dry van and refrigerated operations.
Alan Washburn, operations manager of Hoover, Ala.-based Universal Logistics Services (ULS), has also seen a steady flow of bid requests during the spring and summer.
“This is typically our slow season for bids. Most (bids) are the fall and winter,” he says. ULS is a mid-size third party logistics provider with customers in retail, beverage and automotive industries. ULS also has a fleet that provides dedicated contract carriage.
According to the Cass Truckload Linehaul Index, contract freight rates fell by 1.6 percent in July, 2016, year over year (YOY). It was the fifth consecutive month of YOY decline. This year, pricing in the spot market has been well below 2015 averages.
As a sign of fleets adjusting to soft pricing and overcapacity, Class 8 truck sales in the United States dropped by 39.8 percent in July, YOY.
The need for technology
