Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

According to the ATA who keeps track of these things, freight is down for the third month in a row and a seven month low.

Any report on housing says the same thing -

Real estate slump continues. There was certainly no housing rebound in June: new Commerce Department data came out Thursday, showing that new home sales diminished by 6.6% last month. Residential resales declined 3.8% in June to the lowest level since 2002, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors. There were two small bright spots in the NAR data: total housing inventory shrank by 4.2% in June, while the national median existing-home price was up 0.3% over June 2006 at $230,100.

And this from Forbes -  

Trucking Shipments Keep Falling
The slumping manufacturing and housing sectors, combined with weak economic growth outside the service sector made the second quarter bad for the trucking industry, said Bob Costello, the trade group’s chief economist.

What’s this doing here?

Trucking firms hungry for drivers like to put veterans behind the wheel “The truck driver shortage is acute, and veterans are a great source of candidates,” Boyce said.

My dispatcher’s wife works in the HR department of a large trucking company. She’s been told to keep hiring when their drivers are sitting around waiting for loads.

Which is it? Can it be both? Are trucking companies hiring so they have a large pool of drivers so when drivers quit they have replacements? Are people quitting faster than the freight is dropping? I’m confused and definitely open for suggestions.