Sluggish occasions to proceed, trucking {industry} specialists say

The freight recession continues, with an outlook that requires aid someday in early 2024, in keeping with trucking {industry} specialists gathered for SMC3 Connections 2023, held this week in Orlando. Roughly 400 attendees turned out for the three-day provide chain schooling occasion, which brings collectively carriers, shippers, logistics providers suppliers, and know-how firms throughout trucking and logistics markets.

Representatives from giant carriers, particularly these serving truckload (TL) markets, emphasised the continuing freight recession and its results on the availability chain by the primary half of the 12 months. In a panel dialogue about managing danger in at this time’s local weather, Brad Stewart, treasurer and senior vp at TL provider Knight-Swift, famous that demand for service throughout the TL market has by no means been “this persistently quiet,” and others indicated {that a} gentle recession within the less-than-truckload (LTL) market is probably going on the horizon, as is a recession within the broader financial system.

Economist Keith Prather elaborated on the financial outlook in a follow-up session, agreeing {that a} U.S. recession is probably going, however including that it’s going to in all probability be “shallow and brief.” Referring to “numerous transferring components” on the financial panorama—together with excessive rates of interest and uncertainties concerning the energy of this 12 months’s peak vacation transport season—he mentioned 2024 and 2025 might add as much as a “sluggish digging out” from the low factors of 2023. Prather is a managing companion and co-founder of consulting agency Armada Company Intelligence.

Expertise was one other scorching subject, with most of the convention periods targeted on how synthetic intelligence (AI) is influencing the trucking market, particularly LTL and last-mile logistics. Key purposes for AI embrace addressing labor points—by liberating staff from mundane duties, equivalent to managing routine e mail correspondence, to allow them to give attention to extra advanced, value-added actions—and for enhancing visibility and predictability in industry-focused software program purposes, equivalent to transportation administration techniques (TMS).

SMC3 supplies {industry} information, know-how options, and schooling programming for LTL and provide chain markets.