Is Hurricane Harvey the Lead-in to Something Significant in Trucking?
How have the after-effects of Hurricane Harvey affected trucking? FTR has quantified the numbers, gauging the impact on the overall trucking market and the Texas and Houston markets in particular.
During the first week, almost 10% of all U.S. trucking was affected in some manner. That number jumps to near 100% for the Gulf Coast region west of the Mississippi. After a month, the numbers will ease but still remain significant. The largest effects were regionalized, but transportation managers across the entire U.S. were scrambling.
As we moved into the second week of the Hurricane Harvey drama, we saw three things happening, all reflecting supply chains and trucking operations thrown out of normal routines by this long and powerful storm.
Volumes fell more in the seven days after the end of the storm than at the height of the storm.Inbound rates were up, as truckers were reluctant to go into this risky environment, even though there were more outbound spot loads than inbound.The Truckstop.com Market Demand Index (MDI) jumped 10% and prices jumped 3%. This is just what one would expect when a storm takes 5-10% of trucks out of normal patterns.Looking to Recovery
It’s apparent that people are working very hard in Houston, because the spot market trucking statistics are showing strong positive moves, in some cases to levels above pre-storm benchmarks.
Beginning with day 13 (Tuesday, Sept. 5), the recovery clearly had started. Outbound volumes in Houston were up for the week and would have been back at pre-storm levels if not for Labor Day. Outbound prices still lagged pre-storm levels. The outbound volume situation was very good news, because it implies that the Houston manufacturing sector, so important for U.S. fuel and chemical supplies, had begun to roar back to life.
On the inbound side we saw clear evidence of the beginning of …Read the rest of this story
