Things are looking up!

Do you think 2017 will bring a better season and overall a better year?

Yes, With the recent positive market fluctuations due to the new incoming president I believe 2017 will be a strong overall year. 2016 brought too much uncertainty and was very flat to say the least. Election years have always proven (as of recent) to prove strong, solid growth in many sectors.

 

Industry Experiences a weak summer season...

Industry Experiences a weak summer season...

Central dispatch listings at an all time low.

Fluctuating in the low 20k's, Centraldispatch.com, The monopoly of all load boards is at a 3 year low, some will blame a slower than normal car sales market due to ride-sharing platforms such as uber and lyft. If the growth trend for ride-sharing keeps continuing as it has been, we are all in some deep trouble.

Do Snowbirds still exist?

Of course, but again, with a soft car market and Uber around, Why does granny need a car when she gets to florida? She can simply hitch a low cost ride, you do the math:

1.) Transport car to and from florida: $1400
2.) gas / parking / maintenance while in Florida for 5 months: $600

That's two grand, My grandparents could spend $300.00 a month on Uber and and be well under that number, not to mention riding in style. We may see our beloved snowbird routes fizzle out in the next year or so. HINT: Its already happening.

So whats left?

Well, lets see... IT'S NOT GOOD! We have pretty much have taken our bread and butter out, so the occasional specialty car move or military relocation.... Again, not looking good.

Whats Next?

Autonomous cars, the death of car sales and most transport as we know it. Autonomous trucks carrying autonomous cars, check out this 30K retrofit: https://www.wired.com/2016/05/otto-retrofit-autonomous-self-driving-trucks/

I'm sure when perfected (and legal) carriers will be buying these things up like candy, at least prices will go even lower to transport what we got left.

AUTO TRANSPORT APPS

Auto Transport Apps, The future, or a nightmare you can't even begin to imagine...

In this day an age one would expect their to be a plethora of car shipping apps similar to uber and lyft except for consumers that need to ship vehicles. While this technology has already arrived already in the freight shipping sector, it has yet come to ours. Companies such as Convoy and Cargomatic have jumped into this both claiming that they are the "uber" of freight shipping. One can only assume this means auto transport is next.

Not So Fast.

Not so easy though, this requires money, not the kind of money that daddy gave you to open your brokerage, real money. The kind of money to hire a real (non commissioned) work staff. Then advertising, lots of it, I'm talking top of google money to get the word out, it would be 10 to 100 times more capital then uber to get the word out. This industry is not so "word of mouth" as ride sharing apps. so you can imagine that we got a while to go but the basic apps and infrastructure is in place already.

TIP FOR JUNE 2016

One helpful tip I can recommend for you is to make sure that your office number (800) is in your metatag, this will increase your monthly website calls by 200%. An old friend of mine shared that tip with me many years ago.