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.

Industry Update

It would appear that the broker boom of 2011 is all but gone, you just done see an influx of car shipping companies like you have in days past. The larger ones remain and the smaller ones seem to eek by. 1-2 man owner/sales reps have recently proved to be a popular business model due to rising overhead.

Some companies buy leads, some use Uship and a few try to market small car dealerships. I know one thing, right now does not seem like a good time to open one of these businesses. Lead prices will continue to rise and smaller companies will trickle away slowly but the big 20 will remain, hammering it out day by day.

Industry booming!

Seems like this is going to be a record summer as far as transport moves, Centrals numbers is at the highest in years. Large retail brokerages are still on the rise despite the bond increase to 75k, but the most surprising thing is postings for large trucking companies such as DAS and UNITED are down 12% and brokerages are up 8% year over year showing the power of the broker. As long as fuel prices plateau and do not increase, this summer will break records!

Record winter season as Oil prices continue to fall

With the price of oil screaming below $62.00 a barrel, the transport industry benifits tremendously. Both brokers and Carriers profits are on the rise this winter season for what is turning out to be a record Year. Top research analists are calling for oil to go as low as $50.00 per barrel. With all this positvity the future looks bright for 2015, for now.

Tim

Bond Prices Raised from 10,000 to 75,000

The broker bond has been raised from $10,000 to $75,000. Transport companies are required to be more transparent in the payment of claims by bonds and trusts. All motor carriers, freight forwarders and brokers must register for each function performed. What Does this Mean? Less creation of transport companies and Most "Mom and Pops" will be out of business in no time. theirs one people do not have right now Cold hard Cash or impeccable Credit. Bad for Lead Providers. bad for brokers. bad for business...