Transportation TIP List: Week of October 14th, 2018

It’s a thrilling time in sports, with baseball coming down the homestretch, football in full force and the basketball season tipping off. It’s also an exciting time in the shipping world, and for this week’s TIP List we’re highlighting some thrilling transportation trends. From ways shippers are game planning for trucking bids to the latest happenings in manufacturing – check out the full line-up of articles below!

• U.S. Shippers Get More “Surgical” in Trucking Contract Bidding: As the fourth quarter begins and the trucking peak looms ahead, many shippers are launching bids that will take effect in the first or second quarter of 2019, setting price and service expectations for the year.

• Steps for Manufacturing Shippers to Adjust to Market Growth: October 5th was National Manufacturing Day – a yearly celebration of modern manufacturing that looks to address misperceptions about the industry and gives employees a day to show what they do. In honor of the “holiday,” here are trends in the sector and ways shippers are approaching the market.

• Trucking Rates Climb to Round out the 3rd Quarter, but Yearly Growth Continues to Moderate: Data on producer prices shows that overall inflation pressure continued to stabilize at the end of the 3rd quarter, rising modestly in September. Rates within trucking posted stronger growth during the month, led by big increases in LTL pricing.

• Class 8 September Sales Post Nearly 34% Year-Over-Year Gain: Class 8 U.S. retail sales in September rose 33.9% YoY to 23,648, WardsAuto.com reported. For the first nine months of 2018, sales hit 178,199. That was an increase of 32.5% from 134,481 in the 2017 period.

• Warehouse Space Growing Tighter on Rising E-Commerce Demands: Warehouse space keeps getting harder to find as the drive toward online retail sales pushes more goods into already-squeezed U.S. distribution centers. According to CBRE Group Inc., distribution and e-commerce fulfillment operations are moving into new space just as quickly as they are being built.

What current transportation trends are you scouting out?