Economic Watch: Retail Sales Gains Push GDP Hopes Higher

One of the biggest drivers of the U.S. economy shifted into high gear in July, posting its biggest gain in seven months, according to a new Commerce Department report.

Retail sales increased 0.6% from June, the largest gain since December 2016 and better than a consensus estimate from Wall Street.

The department also upwardly revised June's performance for a 0.3% hike following an originally reported 0.2% drop from May. Retail sales in many earlier months of the year were lackluster.

The June level of retail sales is 4.2% higher than the same time a year earlier. Total retail sales for the May 2017 through July 2017 period were up 3.9% from the same period a year ago.

Helping to push the June level higher was a 1.2% increase in auto sales from the month before, its biggest increase since December. There were also strong gains in sales at furniture stores, hardware stores and restaurants.

Excluding sales of autos, gasoline, building materials and food services, so called “core sales” surged 0.6% last month following an upwardly revised 0.1% increase in June.

Non-store retailers, which includes online shopping, reported sales increased 1.3% in July from the month before, while recording a whopping 11.5% compared to July 2016.

This latest gain in retail sales adds to the hopes that the overall U.S. economy will find even more traction in the current quarter. The nation's gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.6% in the second quarter, up from the 1.2% pace in the first quarter of the year.

The July retail sales report was strong overall, and so was the core retail sales, which goes into the calculation of GDP, according to Eugenio J. Alemán, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities.

“This means that not only is the second quarter personal consumption expenditures probably going to be revised higher ...Read the rest of this story

Time to Face The Future Head-On

Newcomers to trucking are looking at established business models and probing for weaknesses with fresh eyes -- and ideas. Photo: Daimler Trucks

It's happened before and it's going to happen again – soon.

Somewhere, sometime in the very near future, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Tesla's Elon Musk, or some other tech guru you you may never have heard of, is going to sit down and pore over every aspect of your business model they can find.

They're going to look at the equipment you run and how you use it and when you get rid of it. Your fuel of choice and how much of it you burn. They're going to look at your maintenance costs. When your shops are open. And when your shops are closed. The routes you run. How long your trucks stay out on the road. Who your customers are. What your customers' demands are – how green they want you to be, how efficient they want you to be. They're going to look at what you pay your front office people and technicians working in your shops. They're not only going to look at what you pay your drivers, they're going to look at how you pay your divers. They're going to look at the tools you give your drivers to help them work and live better out on the road. And they're going to look at your profit margins and how much money you're bringing in.

All of that is nothing new. It's called “due diligence,” and pretty much anyone interested in starting a business does the same thing before investing time, money and energy in a new venture.

But what is different is these visionaries are looking at your business with fresh eyes. They're looking at every aspect of your operations through the prism of new ...Read the rest of this story

Trucking asked to rank top concerns

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Numbers, numbers, numbers

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Trucking by the Numbers 2017

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