Approximately 83% of U.S. adults are expected to spend an estimated $28.1 billion celebrating this year’s Mother’s Day, which roughly equals 150,000 truckloads. That's a lot of freight.
The Port of Los Angeles and neighboring Port of Long Beach comprise the San Pedro Bay Port Complex, which handles more containers per ship call than any other port complex in the world.
Typically, the split between contract and spot freight is somewhere in the 85/15 range. Starting in June of last year, spot volumes began to accelerate as a percentage of total volume.
At a time when the U.S. ports are struggling to overcome surging volumes, the grounding of the Ever Given could result in a ripple effect throughout the intermodal and truckload sectors through the summer.
Last week, two data points and one jaw-dropping chart suggested that there’s still no end in sight to the ongoing restocking of inventories that have been depleted due to COVID-10.
At the start of the pandemic last year, supply chain expert Daniel Stanton – aka Mr. Supply Chain – spoke about the “bullwhip effect” on supply chains. Almost a year later, the bullwhip effect is rattling supply chains again, as manufacturers struggle to keep up with demand for consumer goods.
Truckload capacity is tight and expected to get tighter, but judging where truckload demand is headed remains challenging as COVID-19 headwinds ease and increasing tailwinds from the vaccine distribution and economic stimulus converge.
