BY MARK B. SOLOMON, SENIOR EDITOR
MOTOR FREIGHT
ON A BALMY FLORIDA MORNING IN MID-APRIL,
Freight brokers, Rutkowski said, are eager to negotiate
rates with shippers yet are willing to break their contractual
commitments should capacity tighten and a truck is no longer
available at the predetermined rate. Brokers and their carriers want
the stability of committed volumes at negotiated rates, yet carriers also
want the freedom to reposition their assets should circumstances
dictate, said Rutkowski, a 40-year industry veteran. “You can’t have
it both ways,” she told broker executives in a NASSTRAC panel
session aptly titled “Ten Things I Hate About You: An In-Depth
Look at the Shipper/Broker/Carrier Relationship.”
Rutkowski verbalized the frustrations of shippers reeling from
one of the most brutal quarters in U.S. transportation history.
Terrible weather in huge swaths of the country during January,
February, and early March kept many trucks off the road for
extended stretches. Rail intermodal networks were hammered,
which had the dual effect of denying truck shippers access to
an alternate transport mode and forcing traditional intermodal
users onto the highways. Smaller truckers picked up some of the
slack, but they too proved prone to shift assets to the spot market
to capture higher rates.
With their contracted truck services often unavailable, shippers were left to the mercies of the spot market. Not surprisingly,
they paid dearly for space. Spot rates for dry van services—the
most common type of truckload transportation—climbed to
between $1.95 and $2.09 a mile during the quarter (including
fuel surcharges), according to DAT, a consultancy that tracks the
transportationreport
Bad weather, tight capacity made for soaring costs
and tense times for truckers in the first quarter. Was
this an anomaly or the shape of things to come?
The winter of
their discontent
