Last October 14, it was

TNTRAILERTRASH said:

Some places are at $4.73

Click to expand...

Which is why Owner Operators are parking their trucks. I just hired 4 this week. Its getting hard for them to stay afloat.

And freight rates are down. I was involved with a customer who dropped their freight rates to $1.80 per mile. Headhaul lane to Texas. Where truckers will be lucky to get a buck per mile on the backhaul. O/O are doing it just to try and make a dollar and they are dropping like flies. They are making $3000 and spending $2000 of that on fuel alone. Living on Ramen Noodles and Sardines while wondering how they are going to make their truck payments.

Speaking of equipment costs? Have you paid that any attention? I have 18 2023 International LT625's and 10
KW 990's coming. (9 of the KW's have delivered) $180,000 a piece. And they are still coming in by ones and twos. They are still having trouble getting parts to make them. The KW's sat completed for nearly a month waiting on a hood latch part.

TNTRAILERTRASH said:

And you told me a week or 2 ago freight rates were really high? Wa-haaaponded? You might want to put someone into booking freight off of Landstar's brokers. You guys got to the NE, right? Nobody wants to go there.

Click to expand...

Freight rates have dropped like a rock. All because O/O’s and smaller companies are working for rock bottom prices. Let them haul it. It won’t last. They are cutting off their noses to spite their face. Look at all the trucking companies that have shuttered or been bought in the past weeks.

DIRSUPop said:

I'm a damaged freight inspector for a national company, and our business has fallen WAY off. With trucks idle, fuel prices through the roof ($4.69 here locally), material is sitting in warehouses or on docks, and very little is moving.. I've been doing these inspections for 15 years, and this has been the slowest year ever. (It's sure put a dent in my range time and ammo inventory......)

Click to expand...

I am the Director of Safety and Compliance of a trucking company. We have 200 trucks. On any given day we normally have some 650 loads booked. For a while now, the number has been closer to 600. For the past 3 weeks or so, the number is hovering around 400 loads. I have been with my company since 2009. Never seen it this bad.

DIRSUPop said:

As a Navy cryptologist in the mid-60's,

Click to expand...

I was your Marine corps counterpart, but a decade behind you. Worked in a FSSG. I did crypto, countermeasures and counter-counter measures. As a USMC reservist I was NCOIC of the 4th Mar Div, Comm Co mobile communications.

undeRGRound said:

FWIW, I have seen lots of reports that we are running out of diesel, @Re-Runt

I kept meaning to come and ax Trashy-B what he was hearing. Thanks for bringing that up!

Click to expand...

We are not running out of diesel. The reserve is at 20 something days. That means that if we keep burning diesel at the current rate, and we do not replenish, the diesel will be gone In that time. We are replenishing, just not as fast as we were. Diesel prices will continue to soar I believe, and that will mean increased prices to the consumer. And that sucks.

I wish I could quote a source, unfortunately I can not, but I have heard that at todays use vs replenishment rate, we have somewhere around 300 days of diesel. This is a time of year when diesel use spikes. It will spike again in the spring. The rest of the year the use decreases. No, we are not running out of diesel, at least not anytime soon.

undeRGRound said:

I figured the "days remaining" was a misrepresented figure, possibly, when it started being reported as 22 days and maybe a week later the figure was reported as 25 days, so apparently there had been some more refined. The figures may be 100% true, but being reported out of context, like that, is fear mongering, nothing more.

Thanks for the clarification @greg_r

Click to expand...

Think of it like milk in the grocery store. It starts to snow. People panic. The coolers get empty. But the cows keep making milk and the dairies keep bringing it to the store. The coolers get full again because the snow melts and the people quit panicking.

Same scenario with diesel, production is down, imports from Russia have stopped. We got nearly 700,000 barrels daily from Russia. The crops are harvested. Heating oil will be sold through the winter, and the farmers will plant their crops in the spring. then diesel use will decrease, mostly going to the big trucks. Reserves will increase then. And we should have a plan before the farmers start harvesting their crops in the fall.