WEBVTT
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Thanks very much for joining us on this edition of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast.
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I'm Kevin Baxter with my co-host today, InTech Logistics CEO Rick Lagore.
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Rick?
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Hey.
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And today we're welcoming back an expert guest that we've had on once before a couple of years ago, and the environment was a little different in uh the freight space, though probably no less uh interesting.
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We have Dr.
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Jason Miller, Associate Professor of Logistics with the Department of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University.
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Dr.
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Miller, thanks very much for joining us again.
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Hey, thanks for having me.
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So um we usually like to do uh a get to know you at the beginning.
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And since it's been a couple years, we'll just do a quickie uh this time.
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I think a lot of people do know who you are, but uh uh I guess tell us about what what's uh what you're doing in your department right now and how that dovetails with how you're um how you follow the freight industry.
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Yeah, so most of my um academic research really focuses on sort of I'd say three pillars.
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One is motor carrier safety.
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Um the second is uh employment dynamics and more broadly market dynamics in trucking.
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So employment, payroll changes, uh job creation, destruction, uh, freight demand, things like that.
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And then kind of the third pillar is uh much more intersection of economic policy in the supply chain space, especially um tariffs, as well as um looking at how shortages uh in various sectors um you know sort of play, I think, a more profound role than we realize.
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Whether it's um, you know, you know, right now I'd say probably the biggest issue is shortage of capacity for electrical goods and things like that to build out data centers.
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Yeah, so um I mean we can we can go a lot of different directions to start, but but let's first kind of uh set the the market stage because uh with last time we were uh talking to you, we were in the midst of what was continually uh referred to as a freight recession by by a number of folks.
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Uh depends on your perspective whether whether you went that direction or not.
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But uh either way, the freight was in a bit of a downturn uh in its cycle and it was lasting a while.
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Now we're in a situation where a lot of people are uh starting to call it a recovery or have already called it a recovery, or getting close to that, and at least in terms of the rates.
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But uh so where do you see the market now uh compared to where it was a couple of years ago where uh last time we spoke?
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Yeah, so I I think to begin, so as I would define freight recession, for me, it always goes back to economics where it's the depth, the breadth, and the duration of a downturn of overall activity.
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And so for me, I'm always focused on freight volumes more so than pricing, because pricing follows supply and demand.
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From a demand side right now, if we look in the truckload space, um freight volumes have actually been growing since about mid-2024.
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So we arguably exited that freight recession by actually about Q1 of 2025, once we got past the Boeing strike that really hit aerospace production in the last quarter of 2024.
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But so freight volumes have been slowly growing.
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They would have grown much more rapidly last year if it wasn't for all the tariff uncertainty.
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As we moved into 2026, um, I think a lot of firms, you know, they couldn't keep delaying.
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They had to pull the trigger on decisions.
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You did have tariffs come down a little bit for a few months.
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Now we're expecting them to be back up here now in the second half of uh 2026.
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But also you just had this AI CapEx just explosion that is continuing to take place.
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And overall, that has actually pulled up freight volume in the trucking space.
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Uh, the 10 mile index, I co-author in SP publishes, um, his thing's up about 1.4% year over year.
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And that feels about right, just when you look at where imports are, where you look at just how strong demand is for electrical goods, certain types of machinery like large engines, turbines, switch gear, um, construction steel, etc.
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But what you have at the same time is more consumer-oriented freight, whether that's major appliances, whether that's RVs, campers, travel trailers, things like that, furniture, that stuff's doing not only weak on an overall basis, but it's down from where it was last year at this time.
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And so I think part of the issue is that you know, certain verticals that we tend to associate with a strong overall call it consumer economy, you know, those discretionary goods, those are not doing well at the moment.
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But it we're really just being pulled by this truly unprecedented capex surge right now that we're seeing.
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And, you know, if we look right now, let's say at intermotor volumes, they're doing very well.
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Um, you know, we're basically tracking once you add containers and truck trailers.
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I like to have both of those together just because that makes sort of the 2018 period comparable today when you had a lot more um TOFC.
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We're basically tracking 2018 right now, which was a great overall freight market.
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Um, if we look, you know, split coast to coast, uh West Coast Railroads, you know, UP, BNSF, um, they're basically tracking 2018.
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Um, East Coast, we're actually above 2018 levels.
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And actually, right now, you know, intermodal movements on, you know, by uh CSX and Norfolk Southern, um, looking at the latest data, they're actually at the highest levels they've ever been for this time of year.
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And uh I you're you're talking about the the ton mile index.
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I I know you posted about it last week uh of the May data, and and you know, uh a lot of people have talked about this as being a supply-related recovery because of uh in terms of the rates specifically with trucking capacity.
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But uh you mentioned that uh looking at that volume picture sort of shifted your perspective on on the amount of supply versus demand involved in this pricing right now.
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Yeah, so before you know the last couple months of data, I would have been in a camp of 90% supply side, 10% demand side in certain sectors.
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I've probably now shifted those weights in my mind to about 70% supply side, 30% demand side.
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Um, and especially to like, you know, even if you look on the dry van truckload space, that's probably the sector where most of the tightness is pure supply side.
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On the flatbed side, though, which up until I would say July has been by far the strongest of the three spot sectors, especially when you look from a sort of a volume standpoint, an historical comparison.
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Um, flatbed's been much more of a demand story.
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And again, that ties really to that AI sort of capex build-out.
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Because when you look at a lot of the stuff going to these data centers, it's flatbed freight, um, step deck freight, things of that sort.
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And so I do think that it feels different across certain sectors.
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Um, and even when you look, you know, on the dry van side, we saw an incredible increase in terms of the momentum around tightening right after, right around Road Check Week and then the Montgomery rolling.
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Whereas flatbed, it tightened up a little bit, but it wasn't as much of a sort of a momentum swing.
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And I think that speaks a little bit to the supply side piece being more important on that dry van TL space versus the flatbed space, where there have indeed been very good pockets of demand.
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But then again, when you step back and you look at single family housing, there's nothing exciting going on there.
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It's a sector that is on a new start side, it's around 2019 home building levels, which is, you know, post-global financial crisis is fairly good, but it's down 30 plus percent from where it was where we were in 2021 during a mini housing boom.
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So last, if I recall it right, last week they passed in the House um the housing bill.
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Do you think that that has an impact anytime soon, or is this gonna be an impact over several months or several years to try to draw in some of that freight demand?
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I think the rest of this year is pretty much baked in at this point that there's not going to be that much happen.
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I mean, we're past already, you know, getting past peak home building season.
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And right now, the big story is, you know, you look at where 30-year mortgage rates are at.
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I mean, they were last week, I think, at 6.55%.
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That was about the highest they've been since last August.
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Given the um, you know, re I'm not sure restart of hostilities is the correct term, maybe the amping up of hostilities in the Middle East and the effect on energy prices, there is, in my mind, no way the Fed is cutting interest rates this year.
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Um and so if you look, given 10-year yield tends to follow, you know, to some degree, uh, you know, where the Fed funds rate is at, you're you're unlikely to see those 30-year mortgage rates really tick down.
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So and the other thing, too, from the housing side is companies aren't hiring very much.
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If you look at the job opening and labor turnover survey, our hiring rate is somewhere around where it was in 2011, 2012-ish.
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And so we're just in a, you know, if people aren't being hired as much, they're less likely to be moving.
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So when you combine interest rate lock-in with people aren't being hired as much, with very likely a declining population, with you know, high mortgage rates, with a lot of uncertainty, that's just not going to be an environment where we're gonna see a significant uptick in home building um anytime soon.
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So stepping back and listening to what you're having to say, if the AI build-out happens to slow down, we should see a big slowdown in freight demand altogether.
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I think so.
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What we'll see is that sort of marginal freight that is higher today than where it was, you know, last year.
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I think if I had to ballpark it, I'd be willing to bet you that it's, you know, of that increase year over year, I bet you 80 plus percent is AI cap X related.
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That would start to dissipate quickly.
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Um, my concern as well is when you look at where the U.S.
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consumer is at, is obviously folks talk about the K-shaped economy.
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Different groups have tried to estimate what share of spending is the wealthiest 20% versus the remaining 80%.
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And while it's hard to get an exact number, we do know disproportionately right now the wealthier consumers are carrying that spending piece.
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If there's an AI capex slowdown, I'm guessing sort of at the same time you're going to see a significant stock market turn.
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And if you then sort of have that wealth effect take place that people are seeing that, hey, I don't actually have as much money as I thought I had, you start to see that that drawdown there.
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Um and so that's where it's funny as a freight guy, you know, you typically aren't, you know, aren't thinking about, you know, studying what are the neo clouds doing, and why should I worry about what Nebius Group is announcing for their new asset light model of data center operations.
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But you actually have to follow this because, you know, um Steve Eisman of sort of big short fame, he's got great content on YouTube and it's free.
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But his perspective, I try to watch his show um every week when they come out, and you know, he was talking about it recently, and basically the U.S.
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economy right now is literally a function of what the AI, you know, sort of CapEx hyperscaler ecosystem does.
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There's hardly any diversification anymore because of the disproportionate role those companies play in the SP.
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In terms of bond offerings, right now, 50% of bond offerings of sort of incremental new bonds are going into this ecosystem.
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And so, you know, essentially our bond market is increasingly a function of where what those companies are doing.
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Our equity market is a very strong function of that.
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And so we pretty much have one sector really pulling the economy in a way that we didn't even have in the 1990s during the telecom um boo bubble and what turned out to be a bubble, and then um sort of the uh dot-com company bubble.
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And so, really, you know, the the discussion going back is you really have to go back to the 1800s to the build-out of the railroads to find something that parallels what we're seeing right at the moment.
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So, so reading the tea leaves, uh, from what you have been following in the uh AI space, do you think this is sustainable for a while, or is is there something that's that's causing you a little bit of concern already?
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So I I would say I'm concerned from one, just from a historical standpoint, is find me any episode of a massive CapEx boom that did not end up overbuilding itself.
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We had that with the railroads, we had that with telecommunications infrastructure in call it 1998 through 2000, then everything blows up in 01 and 02.
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We, of course, had that with the housing market in the build of 03 through 06 and then starts to crash in 2007 and falls off a cliff in 2008, 09.
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And then the most recent situation would be uh hydraulic fracturing, right?
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I mean, hydraulic fracturing is really what pulled the U.S.
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economy out of the global financial crisis.
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Um, really 2011 through 2014, that's where a lot of your incremental trucking freight came from.
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And that was actually, believe it or not, you know, I always tell folks when they focus on offshoring, that peak machinery production in U.S.
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history was in 2012.
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Not exactly a time period that we think, man, it was a great warring economy, but it was in machinery because all of that was being pulled by the frackers.
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And that obviously went pop in 2015.
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And so if you look historically, every time there's an overbuild.
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So that that is so if this isn't an overbuild, this would be the first time I'm aware of.
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And then what I'm watching for is, for example, you know, uh SpaceX, um, well, it's called broadly defined, I don't even, you know, whatever that company actually consists of right now.
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Um, you know, they were building massive data centers for the idea was for their Grok large language model.
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Well, their one facility was only 11% being used for Grok, so they've started selling that compute capacity to OpenAI.
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Meta's building one of the biggest data centers in the country down in Louisiana, they're just starting this.
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But they actually have said they have excess compute now, and so they're selling that to Anthropic.
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You have um, you know, all of this data center being built in Abilene, Texas, by Oracle for OpenAI, which is the um AI lab behind Chat GPT.
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And so what I'm looking for is evidence, essentially, that some of the entities that said, hey, we need all this compute may not actually need all this compute.
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Um, Jim Chanos, famous investor, he was raising a point too.
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If we think balance sheets, there is a little bit of a weird thing going on right now, too, and that you have a lot of NVIDIA GPUs that have been imported.
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We know that from the Census Bureau data.
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But because the data centers aren't finished yet, these GPUs are just sitting in warehouses.
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But the key thing then means Nvidia has booked these as sales because they've been sold, but then they're sitting on a company's balance sheet as property plan equipment.
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They wouldn't be inventory, they'd be PPE, but they're not being depreciated yet because they're not in use.
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And so we're in a little bit of an odd period where you have revenue being booked on by one entity, but we don't have cost yet being booked on another entity.
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And so that tends to make earnings a little higher on aggregate.
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Once those GPUs get installed and they start being depreciated, that's gonna start going down, or we're gonna start seeing those costs go up because of depreciation.
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And so my view is the rest of this year, we're still gonna be very strong.
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Like you can, there's just too much momentum.
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Um, I think the first half of next year, there's still gonna be a lot of momentum.
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Where to me, I'm starting to get more interested is let's say the middle part of next year into the back part.
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Because when you look at sort of when this data center construction boom really kicks off, it starts in 20 in 2023, then it really ramps up in 24, and then it really ramps up even more in 25, and now we're really ramping up even more in 26.
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And today we're building four times the amount of data center each month compared to what we were building in 2022.
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So this is a huge ramp up, and the imports of a lot of stuff for these data centers start to pick up about nine to 12 months afterwards.
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So we saw data center construction ramp up in 23.
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We see computer and GPU imports and things like that start to ramp up in 24.
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So we know based on that lead time, things are going to be really strong through next year.
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It's a question of when you look at a lot of these bubble cycles, they tend to have about a five-year run period.
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Think housing starts in 03, 04, 05, 06, starts to turn in 07, bad in 08.
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You start thinking telecommunications, 97, 98, 99, 2000, up, 2001, 2 down.
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And so that's where for me, as we move forward, I'm just watching this closely because until we would see some signs of other parts of the freight generating economy really firing up, it would be a concern that if this one piece cools and we're not seeing single-family housing doing better, you know, yes, we're seeing drilling rigs go up.
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There is some ramping up of fracking activity, but it's never going to look like the ramp up in 2012 through 2014.
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We will never drill oil wells like that again because the economics of fracking are different today than they were, Jesus, 12, 12 to 15 years ago.
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But that makes me feel old.
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And so that's where I'm I'm just always looking and saying, where is that incremental source of freight demand going to come from?
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Because if you look at every one of the last freight cycles, there's always been something we can point to.
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And 12 in let's say 2014, which was a good year, it was the fracking boom.
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We had had high ag prices, so there's a lot of ag equipment being bought as well.
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But it was really a machinery fracking boom, ecosystem boom.
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1718 was an everything boom.
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And then back half of 20 through first part of 22 was a consumer boom because of all the money that we had put into things.
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Right now we're not seeing really a freight demand boom.
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We've got a really strong pocket that is AI computing related.
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And so the question is, is there anything else out there that's gonna come about to support that?
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Given, had we not had the Iran war, I would have told you, yes, I think the consumer is going to start to strengthen all through this year.
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We were looking to be in a better place than you know, we are right now.
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And so that is now the wild card is any type of forecast is having to take place a conflict that, you know, as we were talking, you know, in the green room before filming this, you know, we're recording this at, you know, you almost want to put a timestamp on exactly when, because we have no idea what's going to happen while we are filming this.
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That's the type of dynamic environment we're in at the moment.
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So with all that positive stuff that you talked about, AI, and if it falls off the cliff, then we have other things that'll fall off with it.
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Um let's talk fuel a little bit.
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Um we just saw diesel this morning pop up, I believe 7%.
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I think we're back over five bucks a gallon.
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Uh, you've written a few things out there lately on um what, the crack spread um that is talking about um um the supply-demand that that's out there and the dynamic that's being um uh exhibited in that that metric.
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Talk to us a little bit more about your your thoughts on on uh what's going on with the the diesel and fuel.
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Yeah, so right now, I mean, again, like as we're filming this right at the moment, so crude's about WTI is at 85, Brent's at about 91.
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And so, but the key thing is is right now these crack spreads, which is the difference between essentially the the price refiners receive for two barrels of gasoline plus one barrel of diesel, that total minus the price of Of three barrels of crude oil.
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And so right now, checking it as of this moment, the crack spread is$69.33 per barrel.
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So what that's meaning is you're putting in crude at, let's ballpark at$85 as I get out my calculator.
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I'm just going to round that up to$70.
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The price of refined product is actually about$155 a barrel at the moment.
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And that's what the refiners receiving.
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That's not the final retail price.
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And so if you look at where the diesel futures prices are at, we've basically come back on the diesel future forward month front month to pretty much right where we were in May.
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And so before it had come down.
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So you know, we're looking at diesel likely heading up at least$525 a gallon, if not back to$540-ish a gallon right now at the moment.
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And so that will, for a lot of trucking companies, that will put a strand on them.
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But overall, it actually helps from an intermodal standpoint because intermodal is so much more fuel efficient.
00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:19.920
And right now, you know, looking at the data from Journal of Commerce, where I'm their forecaster for their intermodal savings, you know, spot intermodal right now is actually at record high savings at the moment compared to truckload.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:23.039
And so on that spot basis, we're at record savings.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:27.039
We haven't seen that so much yet on the contract side.
00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:36.160
And so I think one thing interesting going on right now is we've seen truckload spot rates in the dry van space have just exploded up so much.
00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:40.079
Intermodal spot rates have gone up, but not nearly as much.
00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:43.920
So we've got this huge delta that's opened up between them.
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:53.119
On the contract side, though, we are not seeing the contract truckload rates go up nearly the same amount as the spot rates.
00:23:53.200 --> 00:24:00.799
And so I think that is also consistent with okay, demand is overall not, again, that great.
00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:12.319
It's up a little bit, but probably from a dry van space, it's probably much more towards the neutral-ish because massive, you know, generators and batteries are not moving dry van.
00:24:12.559 --> 00:24:13.599
They're moving flatbed.
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:20.720
And so, you know, intermodal right now is very attractive savings-wise on a spot basis.
00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:47.519
On a contract basis, we're back to about the attractiveness level we were at in 2018, but we're not on a contract intermodal savings to back half of 21, first half of 22 levels, where we were at essentially record savings, but because of all the traffic snarls in the railroads networks, we weren't seeing that record intermodal savings translating over to volume increases.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:53.680
We're actually seeing weaker volumes in the back half of 2021 than in the back half of 2020.
00:24:55.039 --> 00:25:02.000
Uh since you brought up service, so how how has that uh changed then from that period of time to now?
00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:10.000
Is is it uh are uh are the railroads doing a better job of having kind of tied things up a little bit from uh from where that was?
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:13.680
So certainly service today is much, much, much better.
00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:22.000
You know, the back you know, mm starting kind of late Q2 2021 through really the rest of that year was just very, very, very poor.
00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.119
Um, but that was not just the real, that was everything.
00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:33.440
Like it was the essentially record period of supply chain snarls was basically Q3 of 21 through about Q2 of 22.
00:25:33.599 --> 00:25:42.400
Like that that was a horrible 12-month period um for all modes, getting inputs, it was just just bad overall.
00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:44.720
Um things are better today.
00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:47.839
Now, you guys can probably provide a little bit more detail on your end.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:56.480
I have uh believe I've read some issues of you know, some some challenges in let's say Chicago in terms of getting drayage and things of that sort.
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:02.160
But that seems to really to me be a just a story of we've got really strong volume at the moment.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:11.440
Um on the intermodal side, we have again had you know continued decline of trucking capacity since last year.
00:26:11.599 --> 00:26:18.799
Now it seems that we're bottoming out, but and that's based on the BLS's employment data with the caveat.
00:26:19.440 --> 00:26:27.039
I don't have visibility um from the benchmark data for what happened in the first quarter of this year yet.
00:26:27.119 --> 00:26:30.400
We don't get that till um the first week of September.
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:46.720
And I won't be surprised with all of the additional enforcement if we don't haven't seen a huge decrease in the number of trucking establishments, which would essentially mean that the payroll data that appears to have bottomed out is actually being overestimated.
00:26:46.960 --> 00:27:01.680
And so I just have a hunch that even as low as trucking capacity is coming out from the um payroll data, which is basically, hey, we're back to like 2013, 2014, early 2014 levels.
00:27:01.920 --> 00:27:08.319
I wouldn't be surprised if we're not around 2012 levels right now, once once we get that benchmark data.
00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:12.400
And so that's just of course, you know, the challenge that we're seeing.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:27.200
Um one thing that has been to me interesting is again, if we look, and you know, JB Hunt's data clearly reflected this, is East Coast intermodal is actually perform out way outperforming western intermodal.
00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:50.240
And you know, that and to me, that speaks to the tightness of the truckload market that you've likely seen a good amount of intermodal conversion, more on that eastern side where you've got much more sensitivity versus the western part of the country where, hey, it's Los Angeles to Chicago, intermodal is always going to be a better deal unless it's some super time-sensitive shipment.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:58.000
So, talking about the capacity picture a little more, we're we're definitely down in capacity.
00:27:58.559 --> 00:28:02.799
How is this cycle different in terms of whether it'll come back?
00:28:04.079 --> 00:28:09.599
So I'm a firm believer in that you know, the market always ends up responding.
00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:10.880
By the market, I mean carriers.
00:28:10.960 --> 00:28:13.279
They will respond to price signals.
00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:17.759
We're seeing new class eight orders are so strong right now.
00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:28.880
Um, yes, we've got had EPA, um, nitrous oxide clarity in terms of rules, but we're too strong to be just purely people replacing existing equipment.
00:28:28.960 --> 00:28:31.359
There, there is intent on adding capacity.
00:28:31.759 --> 00:28:36.480
I don't see capacity really meaningfully starting to rebound this year.
00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:44.880
Maybe we start to see a little incrementally in Q4 as some carriers um try to expand to catch some of that high-priced holiday spot freight.
00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:50.160
Um, I think we will see capacity slowly come online next year.
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:56.559
And the question then is really where to freight where does freight volume go?
00:28:56.799 --> 00:29:07.839
Because the one thing I always like to stress is trucking demand taking out you know 800 mile intermodal shipments where there is price elasticity.
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:13.440
But overall trucking demand is fairly price inelastic, right?
00:29:13.599 --> 00:29:22.000
I mean, Procter and Gamble doesn't care if it's$3.50 a mile or$2.25 a mile, they still got to move stuff to Walmart.
00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:33.359
So demand really isn't that price elastic outside of, again, a few certain lanes, certain shipment distances, certain equipment types, where we do have intermodal conversion.
00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:53.680
But supply has always historically been super price elastic in that prices go up, supply gets added, 12, you know, nine to 15 month lag in many instances to buy new equipment, wait long enough to make sure this isn't just a blip that hey, pricing's actually here.
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:59.039
Try to set up and obtain new accounts and all of this process.
00:29:59.359 --> 00:30:08.640
And so if you basically say, okay, the market, you know, we can safely say the flip started December of last year, but that was the holiday.
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:12.240
Then you had terrible winter storms in January and February.
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:19.039
So it really wasn't until maybe March that people started, you know, that that was kind of the point when things stayed really high in March.
00:30:19.119 --> 00:30:21.119
It was like, okay, the market has turned.
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:33.839
So if you take that time horizon and say, okay, carriers will start significantly thinking about expanding, you know, late Q1, they're not going to be expanding until again, probably next year.
00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:38.400
And so for me, you'll see capacity start coming online next year.
00:30:38.559 --> 00:30:40.160
It's not going to be a flood, though.
00:30:40.240 --> 00:30:42.480
It will be slow but sure.
00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:50.240
That does create more possibility that we don't overshoot so long as demand stays strong.
00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:58.640
And so my statement is you know, to shippers out there, the rest of this year, it is going to be a tight truckload market.
00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:07.839
There is nothing that is going to change on the supply side that is going to make things not very tight.
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:16.480
Now, from a demand side, yes, if crude oil goes to 150 a barrel, which is a possibility.
00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:19.119
I think that China will not let that happen.
00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:30.079
They'll keep drawing down their reserves because it's important to remember China is the one country in the world that has the least interest in seeing$150 a barrel crude oil.
00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:31.359
Not the United States.
00:31:31.519 --> 00:31:41.359
It's China that doesn't want to see that because they're the world's biggest importer by far, but it also crushes demand for their exports all around the world.
00:31:41.839 --> 00:31:54.559
So, you know, the only situation that would cause a significant drop in freight demand in the US would be if energy does go to some catastrophically high level.
00:31:54.799 --> 00:31:59.039
$6 gallon gasoline,$8 gallon diesel, things like that.
00:31:59.119 --> 00:32:04.160
Yes, we're we're in trouble at that point because consumers are going to be quite strained.
00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:08.960
But barring that, um this year is going to be tight.
00:32:09.119 --> 00:32:10.640
There's just no way around it.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:14.079
Now, yes, we're going through our usual seasonal loosening right now.
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:18.480
It's July, you know, July, August, September, typically not much exciting.
00:32:18.559 --> 00:32:20.799
You know, even October is not that exciting.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:28.000
But you get to back half of November into December, the truckload spot market's going to tighten even more with the holiday season.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:30.960
So this year is going to be tight.
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:46.480
Next year, I will be what I'm most curious to see about, honestly, is going to be the Q1 after MLK Day seasonal sort of doldrums, assuming there's not some terrible polar vortex craziness.
00:32:46.799 --> 00:32:50.799
Because I want to be able to compare that period to where we were at this year.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:53.920
That will give us a sense of where 2027 is.
00:32:54.079 --> 00:33:01.359
If things are equally as tight, and especially if there's not bad weather, then that means it's going to be a tight year through at least Q3.
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:06.240
Again, barring some shock from a freight demand standpoint.
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:12.799
Because I don't see the ability of capacity to come online that aggressively, but it will come online.
00:33:13.359 --> 00:33:27.039
So if freight demand doesn't increase much more beyond current levels, probably by the end of Q2 next year, you start to see the market moving quite rapidly towards sort of equilibrium.
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:35.119
And my definition of equilibrium in trucking is generally plentiful capacity with seasonal tightening.
00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:46.640
So to me, equilibrium looks like what 2019 looked like, even in a large degree, what 2025 looked like, outside of December when it was super duper tight.
00:33:46.799 --> 00:33:49.680
And so to me, that's what equilibrium looks like.
00:33:50.000 --> 00:34:06.160
I think that freight demand, if it doesn't grow much beyond where it's at, by Q3 of next year, we will have added enough supply that we will start to get much closer to that equilibrium stage.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:18.159
So in addition to the actual equipment side of capacity, one question that a lot of people have is about the people to drive the equipment as uh as that comes back to.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:31.599
Uh does there seem to be a supply of uh of potential folks or or folks who maybe are already able to do it that don't have equipment right now to come back to to operate it when uh that time comes?
00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:40.719
Yeah, so this is one where there's been some really good academic research that looks at like where do people you know come from when they enter trucking?
00:34:41.039 --> 00:34:50.400
And I and I think the challenge has been is there has been a narrative developed that this is all immigrant workforce right now.
00:34:50.559 --> 00:34:52.639
Like I see that sort of that narrative.
00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:57.360
It seems to be, it's at least to me how I interpret a lot of what people say.
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:01.519
But the evidence really has never suggested that that's the case.
00:35:01.760 --> 00:35:04.960
Folks enter trucking from a wide variety of professions.
00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:09.679
No, it's often not a first career, but somebody gets fired from an office job.
00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:12.960
They say, you know what, I don't want to work in an office, I'm gonna do something different.
00:35:13.119 --> 00:35:18.000
I've heard through the grapevine, through something, that hey, this is a market that needs drivers.
00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:25.679
Um, you know, folks who are, you know, for hire owner operators that also have other skills.
00:35:25.840 --> 00:35:26.960
Hey, the market's down.
00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:30.320
I don't drive my truck, market hops up, market picks up.
00:35:30.559 --> 00:35:35.199
I stop doing whatever else I was doing, I'm gonna get back and I'm gonna start driving again.
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:36.960
So it's gonna take time.
00:35:37.039 --> 00:35:42.800
You've had a lot of driver training schools shut down, so that that's again another constraint in the pipeline.
00:35:43.039 --> 00:35:51.119
But you will get folks who will say, you know what, this is a better job opportunity than what where I'm currently employed.
00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:54.000
And so it will take time.
00:35:54.159 --> 00:36:23.119
Um, but there's a great paper, um, it's publicly public domain, but it's by uh Kristen Monaco, who was at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a good friend and co-author of mine, Steven Burks, um, who's at the University of Minnesota Morris from 2019 that actually looked at where people entered trucking from, and it isn't the picture that necessarily gets conveyed, but this was with population level data and you know, good examples, forklift drivers.
00:36:23.199 --> 00:36:25.280
They interact with truckers quite frequently.
00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:30.159
You know, somebody hears and says, hey, you know, it's a really good time to become a truck driver, guess what?
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:32.960
They decide that they're gonna become a truck driver.
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:37.360
And so you have a lot of folks who enter the profession that way.
00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:47.679
Um, you know, when you look overall, what I'm gonna call sort of the, and I still hate the term, but sort of the blue-collar economy, it is not great right now.
00:36:47.840 --> 00:36:50.320
Housing construction is not that strong.
00:36:50.559 --> 00:36:54.159
Factory jobs are not being added very robustly.
00:36:54.239 --> 00:36:58.559
We're not seeing wholesale jobs being added at a very robust clip.
00:36:58.880 --> 00:37:07.440
Um, where housing jobs have actually been declining from where sort of the peak that they reached in 2022.
00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:20.320
And so there are possibilities for, you know, that because that part of the job market is equally not doing well, that since trucking is doing well, that will attract people to it.
00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:22.880
But again, this process takes time.
00:37:23.199 --> 00:37:25.840
Um, but trucking's like any labor market.
00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:33.280
Um, you know, people can make a better wage there than they can in a comparable profession, they'll shift over to it.
00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:53.760
So getting back to the uh fuel discussion a little bit more, too, because one other piece that uh that we haven't talked about here, but I know you you mentioned recently on uh LinkedIn is that period that we were in earlier in the year when prices were elevated, we still had a lot of reserves out there.
00:37:54.079 --> 00:37:57.360
Um that's not so much the case anymore.
00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:06.159
Yes, so that that is where, you know, especially globally, we entered this year with very ample stocks of crude oil.
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:09.360
A lot of that has been exhausted.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:18.079
There's some open question in terms of uh from the strategic petroleum reserve standpoint, how low we can go.
00:38:18.639 --> 00:38:23.679
No, I've seen estimates as low as 50, we can go down to 50 million barrels.
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:31.519
I've seen other estimates that say that it can't really go much more below 250 million barrels.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:36.079
But you know, right now we're at about 319 million barrels.
00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:42.719
So uh depending on how fast we want to do drawdowns, um, you know, we face constraints.
00:38:42.880 --> 00:39:17.119
The Japanese have released a lot of their inventory, and so we don't have much buffer, but then the other big thing is that we're you know worried about now is um Ansra'ala, which is sort of the proper name for the Houthis and Yemen, their announcement of the embargo on Saudi Arabian oil exports that are leaving the Red Sea primarily through the port of Yambu, which has become so important because prior to the war, Yambu may have exported about 2 million barrels of crude a day.
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:21.519
That's increased to 7 million barrels because of the East-West pipeline.
00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:47.679
Now, if you sort of take VLCC capacity out of the equation because that can't transit the Suez Canal, and you bottle that up in there, if you remove another, let's say by the time you start getting some Suez Max tankers in there to offset it, let's say you move remove another three to four million barrels of oil a day beyond what we've now, you know, remove from Hormuz again.
00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:54.960
And right before we started filming this, uh, Kuwait had announced a product tanker had been struck by a projectile.
00:39:55.119 --> 00:40:02.800
It's had to have been abandoned, crews have been rescued by lifeboats or uh by tugboats type of situation.
00:40:03.679 --> 00:40:09.199
You take another 4 million barrels a day, let's say four or five million barrels a day out.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:12.000
You then take the Hormuz traffic out.
00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:14.960
That's a rough situation to be in.
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:20.960
But my bigger concern is not just actually crude oil, it's global refinery capacity.
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:31.599
Because we have this sort of odd situation in that China importing less crude oil means their refineries are running less and they're not exporting as much.
00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:35.440
So on the refined product side, you've got a China constraint.
00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:44.960
You have Ukraine having knocked out, I've seen estimates from a third to up to a half of Russian refining capacity.
00:40:45.119 --> 00:40:51.199
And they were the, I believe, the world's second biggest exporter of refined product after the US.
00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:54.559
And so you've had those two impacts.
00:40:54.800 --> 00:41:00.800
You've got the Middle East refiner capacity that's not running because that can't be pipelined out.
00:41:01.039 --> 00:41:03.039
So that's all stuck.
00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:13.519
And then you have US refineries running at breakneck pace, Canadian refineries running at breakneck pace, to the point we've been delaying maintenance here in the US.
00:41:13.679 --> 00:41:25.440
When you look at where capacity utilization is at right now compared to historical levels, which means at some point you've got to maintain those refineries and you're gonna have to do a little bit more intensive maintenance.
00:41:25.679 --> 00:41:33.440
So for me, the big issue right now is we have a refined product, the refined product situation is much worse than the crude oil situation.
00:41:33.599 --> 00:41:38.400
And the problem is the refined product piece is not something there's a quick fix for.
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:46.159
And so this is where you know I am quite worried on that refined product side.
00:41:46.400 --> 00:41:55.840
And then, yes, I mean, if the US, let's say we start getting the crude oil, the um strategic petroleum reserve down to the point we can't really release much more.
00:41:56.159 --> 00:42:18.719
If you take another, you know, call that 0.8 to 1 million barrels a day out of the equation, and you've lost four or five million because of the Yanbu situation, and the Gulf is down, and Venezuela is not producing as much because of the terrible earthquake they had, this is all not a good combination.
00:42:19.119 --> 00:42:25.119
Because at some point, China has to come back to the market, we believe to some degree.
00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:41.039
And the most important thing for everybody watching to understand is the reason that crude prices came down from where they were at in May was because China dropped their imports by potentially six million barrels a day.
00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:45.840
We're not sure how much of that is, they're not filling their strategic reserve.
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:52.880
They've switched the petrochemical complex over to coal-based feedstock as opposed to oil-based feedstock.
00:42:53.199 --> 00:43:01.519
Demand versus permanent demand destruction versus call it temporary demand destruction because we're drawing on reserves.
00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:10.960
We don't have a full accounting of that, but I don't think anybody believes China can keep importing 6 million barrels a day less than what they've been importing.
00:43:11.440 --> 00:43:20.320
And so even if that has to come back up 2 million, uh you can start doing the math here and say this is this is not a good situation that we're in.
00:43:20.559 --> 00:43:29.840
And so it it is we we are not we are not uh all is not well in the energy complex, um, to say the least at the moment.
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:38.719
Definitely inflationary, which is going to hold the Fed back from decreasing rates and helping us on the housing front and and various other places as well.
00:43:39.679 --> 00:43:40.639
Nope, exactly.
00:43:40.719 --> 00:43:42.960
And that's that's going to be the issue as well.
00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:48.000
As you know, we we had a little bit of this respite, things were were looking better.
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:54.320
You know, I I like to joke that I think uh the New York Fed president saying that inflation had peaked in June.
00:43:54.400 --> 00:43:58.400
That I'm guessing he's gonna regret having made that statement.
00:43:58.639 --> 00:44:27.519
Because even prior Prior to this conflict, there were concerns about overall inflationary patterns due and due almost entirely to this just in economics we call it this the idea of a soft budget constraint, and that if you have you know investors willing to basically just pour darn near infinite dollars into a sector, you will generate too much demand, and that's going to cause prices to get pulled up.
00:44:27.679 --> 00:44:29.920
And that's what we've seen with memory chips.
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:54.559
Um when you look at, you know, take Micron as an example, a company that three years ago was losing money, they had a negative gross margin to go from last year in calendar Q2 having$3.5 billion of um you know gross margin to this year going to$35.1 billion in gross margin.
00:44:54.719 --> 00:45:08.480
Think about that, a 10x increase in your overall profits while your cost of goods sold went up only 10% from like 5.8 to 6.1 or something like that.
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:12.000
It was like 5.4 to 6.1 billion dollars.
00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:18.960
And so what you've seen is memory prices have gone up so much, it's why Apple raised their prices in July.
00:45:19.199 --> 00:45:28.480
We're gonna see further price increases for consumer goods or consumer electronics as we move through this year, but also on the producer price side.
00:45:28.559 --> 00:45:46.559
Um, I was talking to a major producer of um equipment and they make their own printed circuit boards, and they said their their internal price to make printed circuit boards has doubled since December because of the pricing for higher components.
00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:49.360
And my my question to them was said, what'd you do?
00:45:49.440 --> 00:45:52.480
And they go, Well, you know, you know who we are, you know we're a market leader.
00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:54.320
Our list prices went up.
00:45:54.719 --> 00:46:07.280
And they're just like, We're as are these prices get higher and higher, we're just raising our list prices right now because a lot of our product is going to support the build out of the fiscal ecosystem for AI.
00:46:07.599 --> 00:46:12.400
And so we're not worried we're gonna see demand being decreased.
00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:28.000
Um and so that's where you sort of have this almost you know bad cycle of all this money floods in, all this demand's created, inputs go higher, but because it will flood even more money in.
00:46:28.159 --> 00:46:36.159
There's really no decision of like, hey, should we keep investing in this if memory chips are 400% more expensive?
00:46:36.880 --> 00:46:50.639
For most of us, I mean, imagine what would happen in the trucking space if somebody would start saying, okay, well, equipment's now 75% more expensive, you wouldn't see the same type of capex, but we're not necessarily seeing the slowdown there.
00:46:51.039 --> 00:47:02.320
And so the Fed was honestly already in a bad situation, I would argue, in February of this year, when you looked at where we were at, and now we're just in a very bad situation.
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:04.639
Um, I mean, I I've been blunt.
00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:21.280
I believe the Fed should hike this July with where things are at, and they should certainly hike in September, because unfortunately, inflation negatively affects everybody, whereas um any resulting job loss is more sort of sector specific.
00:47:21.840 --> 00:47:36.719
And if the entire goal of monetary policy is to keep bubbles from forming, you look at what's going on right now with hyperscale or CapEx, put a chart up of that and say, boy, that is consistent with too much exuberance.
00:47:38.559 --> 00:47:42.719
Comes full circle with the uh the AI conversation here.
00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:47.760
It really uh it's uh it's driving everything right now, and it's very interesting to see.
00:47:48.079 --> 00:47:56.000
It will be very interesting to see how that uh progresses going into next year and uh what what else does happen underneath it uh as well.
00:47:56.159 --> 00:48:04.800
Um before we let you go, tell folks where they can find more from you and and find more about uh your program as well.
00:48:05.519 --> 00:48:09.840
Yeah, so best place to reach me is uh LinkedIn.
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:12.639
Um just shoot me a message or connect with me.
00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:22.800
Um terms of our program, Michigan State, um sort of the best place for any information that is just you know sort of simple Google search um on that front.
00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:27.440
Um you know, so I'd say kind of kind of that space there.
00:48:27.519 --> 00:48:35.679
Um one thing I will say is especially if organizations are looking for sort of tailored executive education programs, that is something that we do.
00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:39.280
We've got several clients right now that uh we work with.
00:48:39.440 --> 00:48:51.920
Um and so if that's something that you know comes to mind as you think sort of non-traditional continuous development of workforce, um you know, you can always reach out to me and I can connect you uh with the folks.
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:54.400
I'm no longer an administrator, thank heavens.
00:48:55.440 --> 00:48:58.159
I did my three years of administrative purgatory.
00:48:58.239 --> 00:49:00.079
Um academia is a weird place.
00:49:00.239 --> 00:49:03.199
Uh you kind of step up for a while and then you step back.
00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:09.840
There's really no promotional ladder, um, unlike most other uh types of corporate hierarchies.
00:49:10.239 --> 00:49:13.760
But um, you know, we we do a lot of things like that.
00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:20.400
It's always personally to me the most fun to teach um or programs like that because folks will really push back on you with things.
00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:25.119
Um but yeah, so those are the sort of the best places to reach me out.
00:49:25.599 --> 00:49:26.159
Well, Dr.
00:49:26.239 --> 00:49:27.519
Miller, thanks again for joining us.
00:49:27.679 --> 00:49:28.239
Really appreciate it.
00:49:28.400 --> 00:49:29.280
Yeah, thank you.
00:49:29.599 --> 00:49:31.360
And thanks for having me.
00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:43.119
It was a wide-reaching conversation, and we we ended it knowing that we still had a a lot more meat on the bone with uh the tariff issue that just came up.
00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:48.960
And and I haven't really checked the news yet since we uh since we pressed stop a few minutes ago.
00:49:49.119 --> 00:49:53.760
So I'm not sure, not sure if we missed anything else that uh that might come up.
00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:06.320
But uh yeah, it it's interesting just how much world events, local events, uh a little bit of everything just intertwines with where we're at in in the freight market.
00:50:06.559 --> 00:50:13.920
And uh yes, we're in a certain situation right now with pricing and everything, but how long is that enduring?
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:14.480
Who knows?
00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:15.440
Who knows?
00:50:15.599 --> 00:50:23.360
But we certainly did cover a wide range of topics, and Professor Miller had a ton of different angles to look at things.
00:50:23.599 --> 00:50:28.960
Um a lot of the things uh he had a different perspective on, which was which is good to hear some of that.
00:50:29.119 --> 00:50:39.760
But if people want to figure things out uh to the best of their ability, I mean pulling in uh Jason Miller's information via LinkedIn, as he suggested, is a fantastic place.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:51:03.360
Um he is he he has he does a great job in terms of taking super complex topics and being able to write them in a way to you know about four or five paragraphs and then implication at the last paragraph really helps narrow things down and he does the same thing as he as he did um this time and the last time we had him on the on the podcast.
00:51:03.519 --> 00:51:07.119
So always super excited when we have the opportunity to to bring Dr.
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:12.079
Miller in and go through um his thought process and and where he sees the freight market.
00:51:12.880 --> 00:51:13.440
Yeah, yeah.
00:51:13.519 --> 00:51:30.320
I know reading a lot of his posts, uh I would not be able to begin to decipher a lot of the charts that he's got that he's looking at, and he's able to you know jump through all these different subject matters so easily, and then, as you said, distill them to a point where you can actually go, okay, makes sense.
00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:31.039
I understand.
00:51:31.119 --> 00:51:32.159
I understand where he's coming from.
00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:34.000
I I can at least pretend to understand it.
00:51:34.079 --> 00:51:35.599
I have an idea.
00:51:36.079 --> 00:51:38.480
So uh again, thanks to Dr.
00:51:38.639 --> 00:51:45.679
Miller for joining us on this episode of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast, and thank you for joining us as well.
00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:51.039
Please do rate and review us, subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcasts.
00:51:51.199 --> 00:51:53.679
We have a video now on Apple.
00:51:53.840 --> 00:51:57.039
That's the new one, Spotify, and YouTube, of course.
00:51:57.360 --> 00:52:02.559
And otherwise, we're available for audio everywhere else as well.
00:52:02.719 --> 00:52:07.599
Uh, please do drop us a comment and uh set up automatic downloads.
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:08.719
That's always good as well.
00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:18.719
And you can also drop us an email at podcast at intechlogistics.com if you have a more lengthy comment or something you want to take off uh the public forums.
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.280
And visit www.intechlogistics.com to learn more about intechlogistics, the company.
00:52:25.519 --> 00:52:28.079
For Rick Lagore, I'm Kevin Baxter.
00:52:28.239 --> 00:52:31.599
Thanks very much for joining us, and we will see you again soon.
00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:07.280
Thanks very much for joining us on this edition of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast.
00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:12.800
I'm Kevin Baxter with my co-host today, InTech Logistics CEO Rick Lagore.
00:00:13.359 --> 00:00:13.519
Rick?
00:00:13.679 --> 00:00:13.839
Hey.
00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:27.120
And today we're welcoming back an expert guest that we've had on once before a couple of years ago, and the environment was a little different in uh the freight space, though probably no less uh interesting.
00:00:27.359 --> 00:00:27.920
We have Dr.
00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:35.280
Jason Miller, Associate Professor of Logistics with the Department of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University.
00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:35.840
Dr.
00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:38.159
Miller, thanks very much for joining us again.
00:00:38.719 --> 00:00:40.560
Hey, thanks for having me.
00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:45.679
So um we usually like to do uh a get to know you at the beginning.
00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:49.359
And since it's been a couple years, we'll just do a quickie uh this time.
00:00:49.520 --> 00:01:02.560
I think a lot of people do know who you are, but uh uh I guess tell us about what what's uh what you're doing in your department right now and how that dovetails with how you're um how you follow the freight industry.
00:01:03.359 --> 00:01:09.519
Yeah, so most of my um academic research really focuses on sort of I'd say three pillars.
00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.000
One is motor carrier safety.
00:01:12.159 --> 00:01:18.239
Um the second is uh employment dynamics and more broadly market dynamics in trucking.
00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:26.480
So employment, payroll changes, uh job creation, destruction, uh, freight demand, things like that.
00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:46.400
And then kind of the third pillar is uh much more intersection of economic policy in the supply chain space, especially um tariffs, as well as um looking at how shortages uh in various sectors um you know sort of play, I think, a more profound role than we realize.
00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:55.920
Whether it's um, you know, you know, right now I'd say probably the biggest issue is shortage of capacity for electrical goods and things like that to build out data centers.
00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:17.039
Yeah, so um I mean we can we can go a lot of different directions to start, but but let's first kind of uh set the the market stage because uh with last time we were uh talking to you, we were in the midst of what was continually uh referred to as a freight recession by by a number of folks.
00:02:17.199 --> 00:02:21.039
Uh depends on your perspective whether whether you went that direction or not.
00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:26.800
But uh either way, the freight was in a bit of a downturn uh in its cycle and it was lasting a while.
00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:37.680
Now we're in a situation where a lot of people are uh starting to call it a recovery or have already called it a recovery, or getting close to that, and at least in terms of the rates.
00:02:37.759 --> 00:02:43.680
But uh so where do you see the market now uh compared to where it was a couple of years ago where uh last time we spoke?
00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:56.479
Yeah, so I I think to begin, so as I would define freight recession, for me, it always goes back to economics where it's the depth, the breadth, and the duration of a downturn of overall activity.
00:02:56.719 --> 00:03:03.919
And so for me, I'm always focused on freight volumes more so than pricing, because pricing follows supply and demand.
00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:12.960
From a demand side right now, if we look in the truckload space, um freight volumes have actually been growing since about mid-2024.
00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:27.120
So we arguably exited that freight recession by actually about Q1 of 2025, once we got past the Boeing strike that really hit aerospace production in the last quarter of 2024.
00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:30.960
But so freight volumes have been slowly growing.
00:03:31.039 --> 00:03:35.439
They would have grown much more rapidly last year if it wasn't for all the tariff uncertainty.
00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:41.599
As we moved into 2026, um, I think a lot of firms, you know, they couldn't keep delaying.
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:44.080
They had to pull the trigger on decisions.
00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:47.599
You did have tariffs come down a little bit for a few months.
00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:52.639
Now we're expecting them to be back up here now in the second half of uh 2026.
00:03:53.039 --> 00:03:59.039
But also you just had this AI CapEx just explosion that is continuing to take place.
00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:04.240
And overall, that has actually pulled up freight volume in the trucking space.
00:04:04.319 --> 00:04:11.759
Uh, the 10 mile index, I co-author in SP publishes, um, his thing's up about 1.4% year over year.
00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:27.439
And that feels about right, just when you look at where imports are, where you look at just how strong demand is for electrical goods, certain types of machinery like large engines, turbines, switch gear, um, construction steel, etc.
00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:49.439
But what you have at the same time is more consumer-oriented freight, whether that's major appliances, whether that's RVs, campers, travel trailers, things like that, furniture, that stuff's doing not only weak on an overall basis, but it's down from where it was last year at this time.
00:04:49.680 --> 00:05:04.319
And so I think part of the issue is that you know, certain verticals that we tend to associate with a strong overall call it consumer economy, you know, those discretionary goods, those are not doing well at the moment.
00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:12.079
But it we're really just being pulled by this truly unprecedented capex surge right now that we're seeing.
00:05:12.399 --> 00:05:17.199
And, you know, if we look right now, let's say at intermotor volumes, they're doing very well.
00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:21.839
Um, you know, we're basically tracking once you add containers and truck trailers.
00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:30.560
I like to have both of those together just because that makes sort of the 2018 period comparable today when you had a lot more um TOFC.
00:05:30.959 --> 00:05:35.600
We're basically tracking 2018 right now, which was a great overall freight market.
00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:46.319
Um, if we look, you know, split coast to coast, uh West Coast Railroads, you know, UP, BNSF, um, they're basically tracking 2018.
00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:50.959
Um, East Coast, we're actually above 2018 levels.
00:05:51.040 --> 00:06:02.959
And actually, right now, you know, intermodal movements on, you know, by uh CSX and Norfolk Southern, um, looking at the latest data, they're actually at the highest levels they've ever been for this time of year.
00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:08.480
And uh I you're you're talking about the the ton mile index.
00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:23.120
I I know you posted about it last week uh of the May data, and and you know, uh a lot of people have talked about this as being a supply-related recovery because of uh in terms of the rates specifically with trucking capacity.
00:06:23.279 --> 00:06:34.959
But uh you mentioned that uh looking at that volume picture sort of shifted your perspective on on the amount of supply versus demand involved in this pricing right now.
00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:45.839
Yeah, so before you know the last couple months of data, I would have been in a camp of 90% supply side, 10% demand side in certain sectors.
00:06:46.079 --> 00:06:53.600
I've probably now shifted those weights in my mind to about 70% supply side, 30% demand side.
00:06:53.759 --> 00:07:04.480
Um, and especially to like, you know, even if you look on the dry van truckload space, that's probably the sector where most of the tightness is pure supply side.
00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:18.319
On the flatbed side, though, which up until I would say July has been by far the strongest of the three spot sectors, especially when you look from a sort of a volume standpoint, an historical comparison.
00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:22.240
Um, flatbed's been much more of a demand story.
00:07:22.399 --> 00:07:26.720
And again, that ties really to that AI sort of capex build-out.
00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:34.879
Because when you look at a lot of the stuff going to these data centers, it's flatbed freight, um, step deck freight, things of that sort.
00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:39.199
And so I do think that it feels different across certain sectors.
00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:52.879
Um, and even when you look, you know, on the dry van side, we saw an incredible increase in terms of the momentum around tightening right after, right around Road Check Week and then the Montgomery rolling.
00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:59.920
Whereas flatbed, it tightened up a little bit, but it wasn't as much of a sort of a momentum swing.
00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:11.839
And I think that speaks a little bit to the supply side piece being more important on that dry van TL space versus the flatbed space, where there have indeed been very good pockets of demand.
00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:18.560
But then again, when you step back and you look at single family housing, there's nothing exciting going on there.
00:08:18.639 --> 00:08:36.399
It's a sector that is on a new start side, it's around 2019 home building levels, which is, you know, post-global financial crisis is fairly good, but it's down 30 plus percent from where it was where we were in 2021 during a mini housing boom.
00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:44.240
So last, if I recall it right, last week they passed in the House um the housing bill.
00:08:44.639 --> 00:08:54.399
Do you think that that has an impact anytime soon, or is this gonna be an impact over several months or several years to try to draw in some of that freight demand?
00:08:55.360 --> 00:09:00.559
I think the rest of this year is pretty much baked in at this point that there's not going to be that much happen.
00:09:00.879 --> 00:09:05.120
I mean, we're past already, you know, getting past peak home building season.
00:09:05.279 --> 00:09:08.960
And right now, the big story is, you know, you look at where 30-year mortgage rates are at.
00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:11.840
I mean, they were last week, I think, at 6.55%.
00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:15.440
That was about the highest they've been since last August.
00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:30.720
Given the um, you know, re I'm not sure restart of hostilities is the correct term, maybe the amping up of hostilities in the Middle East and the effect on energy prices, there is, in my mind, no way the Fed is cutting interest rates this year.
00:09:30.879 --> 00:09:43.840
Um and so if you look, given 10-year yield tends to follow, you know, to some degree, uh, you know, where the Fed funds rate is at, you're you're unlikely to see those 30-year mortgage rates really tick down.
00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:48.480
So and the other thing, too, from the housing side is companies aren't hiring very much.
00:09:48.639 --> 00:09:57.519
If you look at the job opening and labor turnover survey, our hiring rate is somewhere around where it was in 2011, 2012-ish.
00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:02.720
And so we're just in a, you know, if people aren't being hired as much, they're less likely to be moving.
00:10:02.879 --> 00:10:23.759
So when you combine interest rate lock-in with people aren't being hired as much, with very likely a declining population, with you know, high mortgage rates, with a lot of uncertainty, that's just not going to be an environment where we're gonna see a significant uptick in home building um anytime soon.
00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:35.440
So stepping back and listening to what you're having to say, if the AI build-out happens to slow down, we should see a big slowdown in freight demand altogether.
00:10:36.159 --> 00:10:36.879
I think so.
00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:42.960
What we'll see is that sort of marginal freight that is higher today than where it was, you know, last year.
00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:53.919
I think if I had to ballpark it, I'd be willing to bet you that it's, you know, of that increase year over year, I bet you 80 plus percent is AI cap X related.
00:10:54.639 --> 00:10:57.840
That would start to dissipate quickly.
00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:01.279
Um, my concern as well is when you look at where the U.S.
00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:05.519
consumer is at, is obviously folks talk about the K-shaped economy.
00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:11.759
Different groups have tried to estimate what share of spending is the wealthiest 20% versus the remaining 80%.
00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:21.120
And while it's hard to get an exact number, we do know disproportionately right now the wealthier consumers are carrying that spending piece.
00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:30.240
If there's an AI capex slowdown, I'm guessing sort of at the same time you're going to see a significant stock market turn.
00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:41.519
And if you then sort of have that wealth effect take place that people are seeing that, hey, I don't actually have as much money as I thought I had, you start to see that that drawdown there.
00:11:41.679 --> 00:11:59.440
Um and so that's where it's funny as a freight guy, you know, you typically aren't, you know, aren't thinking about, you know, studying what are the neo clouds doing, and why should I worry about what Nebius Group is announcing for their new asset light model of data center operations.
00:11:59.759 --> 00:12:09.840
But you actually have to follow this because, you know, um Steve Eisman of sort of big short fame, he's got great content on YouTube and it's free.
00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:17.759
But his perspective, I try to watch his show um every week when they come out, and you know, he was talking about it recently, and basically the U.S.
00:12:17.919 --> 00:12:25.679
economy right now is literally a function of what the AI, you know, sort of CapEx hyperscaler ecosystem does.
00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:32.960
There's hardly any diversification anymore because of the disproportionate role those companies play in the SP.
00:12:33.120 --> 00:12:42.559
In terms of bond offerings, right now, 50% of bond offerings of sort of incremental new bonds are going into this ecosystem.
00:12:42.879 --> 00:12:49.840
And so, you know, essentially our bond market is increasingly a function of where what those companies are doing.
00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.679
Our equity market is a very strong function of that.
00:12:53.919 --> 00:13:11.679
And so we pretty much have one sector really pulling the economy in a way that we didn't even have in the 1990s during the telecom um boo bubble and what turned out to be a bubble, and then um sort of the uh dot-com company bubble.
00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:23.919
And so, really, you know, the the discussion going back is you really have to go back to the 1800s to the build-out of the railroads to find something that parallels what we're seeing right at the moment.
00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:40.720
So, so reading the tea leaves, uh, from what you have been following in the uh AI space, do you think this is sustainable for a while, or is is there something that's that's causing you a little bit of concern already?
00:13:41.279 --> 00:13:52.159
So I I would say I'm concerned from one, just from a historical standpoint, is find me any episode of a massive CapEx boom that did not end up overbuilding itself.
00:13:52.399 --> 00:14:02.639
We had that with the railroads, we had that with telecommunications infrastructure in call it 1998 through 2000, then everything blows up in 01 and 02.
00:14:02.879 --> 00:14:12.639
We, of course, had that with the housing market in the build of 03 through 06 and then starts to crash in 2007 and falls off a cliff in 2008, 09.
00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:17.120
And then the most recent situation would be uh hydraulic fracturing, right?
00:14:17.279 --> 00:14:20.480
I mean, hydraulic fracturing is really what pulled the U.S.
00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:23.360
economy out of the global financial crisis.
00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:28.879
Um, really 2011 through 2014, that's where a lot of your incremental trucking freight came from.
00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:36.639
And that was actually, believe it or not, you know, I always tell folks when they focus on offshoring, that peak machinery production in U.S.
00:14:36.879 --> 00:14:39.039
history was in 2012.
00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:48.960
Not exactly a time period that we think, man, it was a great warring economy, but it was in machinery because all of that was being pulled by the frackers.
00:14:49.679 --> 00:14:53.519
And that obviously went pop in 2015.
00:14:53.840 --> 00:14:57.039
And so if you look historically, every time there's an overbuild.
00:14:57.120 --> 00:15:02.480
So that that is so if this isn't an overbuild, this would be the first time I'm aware of.
00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:14.320
And then what I'm watching for is, for example, you know, uh SpaceX, um, well, it's called broadly defined, I don't even, you know, whatever that company actually consists of right now.
00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:22.240
Um, you know, they were building massive data centers for the idea was for their Grok large language model.
00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:30.559
Well, their one facility was only 11% being used for Grok, so they've started selling that compute capacity to OpenAI.
00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:37.360
Meta's building one of the biggest data centers in the country down in Louisiana, they're just starting this.
00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:43.840
But they actually have said they have excess compute now, and so they're selling that to Anthropic.
00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:54.399
You have um, you know, all of this data center being built in Abilene, Texas, by Oracle for OpenAI, which is the um AI lab behind Chat GPT.
00:15:54.559 --> 00:16:04.720
And so what I'm looking for is evidence, essentially, that some of the entities that said, hey, we need all this compute may not actually need all this compute.
00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:09.519
Um, Jim Chanos, famous investor, he was raising a point too.
00:16:09.679 --> 00:16:19.600
If we think balance sheets, there is a little bit of a weird thing going on right now, too, and that you have a lot of NVIDIA GPUs that have been imported.
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:21.919
We know that from the Census Bureau data.
00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:26.720
But because the data centers aren't finished yet, these GPUs are just sitting in warehouses.
00:16:27.039 --> 00:16:36.159
But the key thing then means Nvidia has booked these as sales because they've been sold, but then they're sitting on a company's balance sheet as property plan equipment.
00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:42.879
They wouldn't be inventory, they'd be PPE, but they're not being depreciated yet because they're not in use.
00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:53.919
And so we're in a little bit of an odd period where you have revenue being booked on by one entity, but we don't have cost yet being booked on another entity.
00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:57.840
And so that tends to make earnings a little higher on aggregate.
00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:06.799
Once those GPUs get installed and they start being depreciated, that's gonna start going down, or we're gonna start seeing those costs go up because of depreciation.
00:17:07.119 --> 00:17:12.640
And so my view is the rest of this year, we're still gonna be very strong.
00:17:12.799 --> 00:17:15.119
Like you can, there's just too much momentum.
00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:19.519
Um, I think the first half of next year, there's still gonna be a lot of momentum.
00:17:19.759 --> 00:17:25.119
Where to me, I'm starting to get more interested is let's say the middle part of next year into the back part.
00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:41.359
Because when you look at sort of when this data center construction boom really kicks off, it starts in 20 in 2023, then it really ramps up in 24, and then it really ramps up even more in 25, and now we're really ramping up even more in 26.
00:17:41.599 --> 00:17:48.960
And today we're building four times the amount of data center each month compared to what we were building in 2022.
00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:58.480
So this is a huge ramp up, and the imports of a lot of stuff for these data centers start to pick up about nine to 12 months afterwards.
00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:02.160
So we saw data center construction ramp up in 23.
00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:07.920
We see computer and GPU imports and things like that start to ramp up in 24.
00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:14.240
So we know based on that lead time, things are going to be really strong through next year.
00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:20.720
It's a question of when you look at a lot of these bubble cycles, they tend to have about a five-year run period.
00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:27.119
Think housing starts in 03, 04, 05, 06, starts to turn in 07, bad in 08.
00:18:27.599 --> 00:18:34.000
You start thinking telecommunications, 97, 98, 99, 2000, up, 2001, 2 down.
00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:58.480
And so that's where for me, as we move forward, I'm just watching this closely because until we would see some signs of other parts of the freight generating economy really firing up, it would be a concern that if this one piece cools and we're not seeing single-family housing doing better, you know, yes, we're seeing drilling rigs go up.
00:18:58.559 --> 00:19:06.880
There is some ramping up of fracking activity, but it's never going to look like the ramp up in 2012 through 2014.
00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:16.559
We will never drill oil wells like that again because the economics of fracking are different today than they were, Jesus, 12, 12 to 15 years ago.
00:19:16.799 --> 00:19:18.240
But that makes me feel old.
00:19:20.319 --> 00:19:26.799
And so that's where I'm I'm just always looking and saying, where is that incremental source of freight demand going to come from?
00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:33.519
Because if you look at every one of the last freight cycles, there's always been something we can point to.
00:19:33.759 --> 00:19:38.799
And 12 in let's say 2014, which was a good year, it was the fracking boom.
00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:43.039
We had had high ag prices, so there's a lot of ag equipment being bought as well.
00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:47.440
But it was really a machinery fracking boom, ecosystem boom.
00:19:47.759 --> 00:19:50.559
1718 was an everything boom.
00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:58.400
And then back half of 20 through first part of 22 was a consumer boom because of all the money that we had put into things.
00:19:59.039 --> 00:20:02.480
Right now we're not seeing really a freight demand boom.
00:20:02.640 --> 00:20:06.720
We've got a really strong pocket that is AI computing related.
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:13.519
And so the question is, is there anything else out there that's gonna come about to support that?
00:20:14.319 --> 00:20:22.160
Given, had we not had the Iran war, I would have told you, yes, I think the consumer is going to start to strengthen all through this year.
00:20:22.319 --> 00:20:28.079
We were looking to be in a better place than you know, we are right now.
00:20:28.319 --> 00:20:48.319
And so that is now the wild card is any type of forecast is having to take place a conflict that, you know, as we were talking, you know, in the green room before filming this, you know, we're recording this at, you know, you almost want to put a timestamp on exactly when, because we have no idea what's going to happen while we are filming this.
00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:51.759
That's the type of dynamic environment we're in at the moment.
00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:59.359
So with all that positive stuff that you talked about, AI, and if it falls off the cliff, then we have other things that'll fall off with it.
00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:01.440
Um let's talk fuel a little bit.
00:21:01.680 --> 00:21:05.839
Um we just saw diesel this morning pop up, I believe 7%.
00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:08.880
I think we're back over five bucks a gallon.
00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:27.519
Uh, you've written a few things out there lately on um what, the crack spread um that is talking about um um the supply-demand that that's out there and the dynamic that's being um uh exhibited in that that metric.
00:21:27.759 --> 00:21:33.200
Talk to us a little bit more about your your thoughts on on uh what's going on with the the diesel and fuel.
00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:43.279
Yeah, so right now, I mean, again, like as we're filming this right at the moment, so crude's about WTI is at 85, Brent's at about 91.
00:21:43.839 --> 00:22:02.960
And so, but the key thing is is right now these crack spreads, which is the difference between essentially the the price refiners receive for two barrels of gasoline plus one barrel of diesel, that total minus the price of Of three barrels of crude oil.
00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:11.759
And so right now, checking it as of this moment, the crack spread is$69.33 per barrel.
00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:18.240
So what that's meaning is you're putting in crude at, let's ballpark at$85 as I get out my calculator.
00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:20.480
I'm just going to round that up to$70.
00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:25.440
The price of refined product is actually about$155 a barrel at the moment.
00:22:25.519 --> 00:22:27.839
And that's what the refiners receiving.
00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:29.839
That's not the final retail price.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:42.640
And so if you look at where the diesel futures prices are at, we've basically come back on the diesel future forward month front month to pretty much right where we were in May.
00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:45.359
And so before it had come down.
00:22:45.599 --> 00:22:54.400
So you know, we're looking at diesel likely heading up at least$525 a gallon, if not back to$540-ish a gallon right now at the moment.
00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:59.200
And so that will, for a lot of trucking companies, that will put a strand on them.
00:22:59.279 --> 00:23:04.880
But overall, it actually helps from an intermodal standpoint because intermodal is so much more fuel efficient.
00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:19.920
And right now, you know, looking at the data from Journal of Commerce, where I'm their forecaster for their intermodal savings, you know, spot intermodal right now is actually at record high savings at the moment compared to truckload.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:23.039
And so on that spot basis, we're at record savings.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:27.039
We haven't seen that so much yet on the contract side.
00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:36.160
And so I think one thing interesting going on right now is we've seen truckload spot rates in the dry van space have just exploded up so much.
00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:40.079
Intermodal spot rates have gone up, but not nearly as much.
00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:43.920
So we've got this huge delta that's opened up between them.
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:53.119
On the contract side, though, we are not seeing the contract truckload rates go up nearly the same amount as the spot rates.
00:23:53.200 --> 00:24:00.799
And so I think that is also consistent with okay, demand is overall not, again, that great.
00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:12.319
It's up a little bit, but probably from a dry van space, it's probably much more towards the neutral-ish because massive, you know, generators and batteries are not moving dry van.
00:24:12.559 --> 00:24:13.599
They're moving flatbed.
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:20.720
And so, you know, intermodal right now is very attractive savings-wise on a spot basis.
00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:47.519
On a contract basis, we're back to about the attractiveness level we were at in 2018, but we're not on a contract intermodal savings to back half of 21, first half of 22 levels, where we were at essentially record savings, but because of all the traffic snarls in the railroads networks, we weren't seeing that record intermodal savings translating over to volume increases.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:53.680
We're actually seeing weaker volumes in the back half of 2021 than in the back half of 2020.
00:24:55.039 --> 00:25:02.000
Uh since you brought up service, so how how has that uh changed then from that period of time to now?
00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:10.000
Is is it uh are uh are the railroads doing a better job of having kind of tied things up a little bit from uh from where that was?
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:13.680
So certainly service today is much, much, much better.
00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:22.000
You know, the back you know, mm starting kind of late Q2 2021 through really the rest of that year was just very, very, very poor.
00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.119
Um, but that was not just the real, that was everything.
00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:33.440
Like it was the essentially record period of supply chain snarls was basically Q3 of 21 through about Q2 of 22.
00:25:33.599 --> 00:25:42.400
Like that that was a horrible 12-month period um for all modes, getting inputs, it was just just bad overall.
00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:44.720
Um things are better today.
00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:47.839
Now, you guys can probably provide a little bit more detail on your end.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:56.480
I have uh believe I've read some issues of you know, some some challenges in let's say Chicago in terms of getting drayage and things of that sort.
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:02.160
But that seems to really to me be a just a story of we've got really strong volume at the moment.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:11.440
Um on the intermodal side, we have again had you know continued decline of trucking capacity since last year.
00:26:11.599 --> 00:26:18.799
Now it seems that we're bottoming out, but and that's based on the BLS's employment data with the caveat.
00:26:19.440 --> 00:26:27.039
I don't have visibility um from the benchmark data for what happened in the first quarter of this year yet.
00:26:27.119 --> 00:26:30.400
We don't get that till um the first week of September.
00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:46.720
And I won't be surprised with all of the additional enforcement if we don't haven't seen a huge decrease in the number of trucking establishments, which would essentially mean that the payroll data that appears to have bottomed out is actually being overestimated.
00:26:46.960 --> 00:27:01.680
And so I just have a hunch that even as low as trucking capacity is coming out from the um payroll data, which is basically, hey, we're back to like 2013, 2014, early 2014 levels.
00:27:01.920 --> 00:27:08.319
I wouldn't be surprised if we're not around 2012 levels right now, once once we get that benchmark data.
00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:12.400
And so that's just of course, you know, the challenge that we're seeing.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:27.200
Um one thing that has been to me interesting is again, if we look, and you know, JB Hunt's data clearly reflected this, is East Coast intermodal is actually perform out way outperforming western intermodal.
00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:50.240
And you know, that and to me, that speaks to the tightness of the truckload market that you've likely seen a good amount of intermodal conversion, more on that eastern side where you've got much more sensitivity versus the western part of the country where, hey, it's Los Angeles to Chicago, intermodal is always going to be a better deal unless it's some super time-sensitive shipment.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:58.000
So, talking about the capacity picture a little more, we're we're definitely down in capacity.
00:27:58.559 --> 00:28:02.799
How is this cycle different in terms of whether it'll come back?
00:28:04.079 --> 00:28:09.599
So I'm a firm believer in that you know, the market always ends up responding.
00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:10.880
By the market, I mean carriers.
00:28:10.960 --> 00:28:13.279
They will respond to price signals.
00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:17.759
We're seeing new class eight orders are so strong right now.
00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:28.880
Um, yes, we've got had EPA, um, nitrous oxide clarity in terms of rules, but we're too strong to be just purely people replacing existing equipment.
00:28:28.960 --> 00:28:31.359
There, there is intent on adding capacity.
00:28:31.759 --> 00:28:36.480
I don't see capacity really meaningfully starting to rebound this year.
00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:44.880
Maybe we start to see a little incrementally in Q4 as some carriers um try to expand to catch some of that high-priced holiday spot freight.
00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:50.160
Um, I think we will see capacity slowly come online next year.
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:56.559
And the question then is really where to freight where does freight volume go?
00:28:56.799 --> 00:29:07.839
Because the one thing I always like to stress is trucking demand taking out you know 800 mile intermodal shipments where there is price elasticity.
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:13.440
But overall trucking demand is fairly price inelastic, right?
00:29:13.599 --> 00:29:22.000
I mean, Procter and Gamble doesn't care if it's$3.50 a mile or$2.25 a mile, they still got to move stuff to Walmart.
00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:33.359
So demand really isn't that price elastic outside of, again, a few certain lanes, certain shipment distances, certain equipment types, where we do have intermodal conversion.
00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:53.680
But supply has always historically been super price elastic in that prices go up, supply gets added, 12, you know, nine to 15 month lag in many instances to buy new equipment, wait long enough to make sure this isn't just a blip that hey, pricing's actually here.
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:59.039
Try to set up and obtain new accounts and all of this process.
00:29:59.359 --> 00:30:08.640
And so if you basically say, okay, the market, you know, we can safely say the flip started December of last year, but that was the holiday.
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:12.240
Then you had terrible winter storms in January and February.
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:19.039
So it really wasn't until maybe March that people started, you know, that that was kind of the point when things stayed really high in March.
00:30:19.119 --> 00:30:21.119
It was like, okay, the market has turned.
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:33.839
So if you take that time horizon and say, okay, carriers will start significantly thinking about expanding, you know, late Q1, they're not going to be expanding until again, probably next year.
00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:38.400
And so for me, you'll see capacity start coming online next year.
00:30:38.559 --> 00:30:40.160
It's not going to be a flood, though.
00:30:40.240 --> 00:30:42.480
It will be slow but sure.
00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:50.240
That does create more possibility that we don't overshoot so long as demand stays strong.
00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:58.640
And so my statement is you know, to shippers out there, the rest of this year, it is going to be a tight truckload market.
00:30:58.799 --> 00:31:07.839
There is nothing that is going to change on the supply side that is going to make things not very tight.
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:16.480
Now, from a demand side, yes, if crude oil goes to 150 a barrel, which is a possibility.
00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:19.119
I think that China will not let that happen.
00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:30.079
They'll keep drawing down their reserves because it's important to remember China is the one country in the world that has the least interest in seeing$150 a barrel crude oil.
00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:31.359
Not the United States.
00:31:31.519 --> 00:31:41.359
It's China that doesn't want to see that because they're the world's biggest importer by far, but it also crushes demand for their exports all around the world.
00:31:41.839 --> 00:31:54.559
So, you know, the only situation that would cause a significant drop in freight demand in the US would be if energy does go to some catastrophically high level.
00:31:54.799 --> 00:31:59.039
$6 gallon gasoline,$8 gallon diesel, things like that.
00:31:59.119 --> 00:32:04.160
Yes, we're we're in trouble at that point because consumers are going to be quite strained.
00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:08.960
But barring that, um this year is going to be tight.
00:32:09.119 --> 00:32:10.640
There's just no way around it.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:14.079
Now, yes, we're going through our usual seasonal loosening right now.
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:18.480
It's July, you know, July, August, September, typically not much exciting.
00:32:18.559 --> 00:32:20.799
You know, even October is not that exciting.
00:32:21.039 --> 00:32:28.000
But you get to back half of November into December, the truckload spot market's going to tighten even more with the holiday season.
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:30.960
So this year is going to be tight.
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:46.480
Next year, I will be what I'm most curious to see about, honestly, is going to be the Q1 after MLK Day seasonal sort of doldrums, assuming there's not some terrible polar vortex craziness.
00:32:46.799 --> 00:32:50.799
Because I want to be able to compare that period to where we were at this year.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:53.920
That will give us a sense of where 2027 is.
00:32:54.079 --> 00:33:01.359
If things are equally as tight, and especially if there's not bad weather, then that means it's going to be a tight year through at least Q3.
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:06.240
Again, barring some shock from a freight demand standpoint.
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:12.799
Because I don't see the ability of capacity to come online that aggressively, but it will come online.
00:33:13.359 --> 00:33:27.039
So if freight demand doesn't increase much more beyond current levels, probably by the end of Q2 next year, you start to see the market moving quite rapidly towards sort of equilibrium.
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:35.119
And my definition of equilibrium in trucking is generally plentiful capacity with seasonal tightening.
00:33:35.279 --> 00:33:46.640
So to me, equilibrium looks like what 2019 looked like, even in a large degree, what 2025 looked like, outside of December when it was super duper tight.
00:33:46.799 --> 00:33:49.680
And so to me, that's what equilibrium looks like.
00:33:50.000 --> 00:34:06.160
I think that freight demand, if it doesn't grow much beyond where it's at, by Q3 of next year, we will have added enough supply that we will start to get much closer to that equilibrium stage.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:18.159
So in addition to the actual equipment side of capacity, one question that a lot of people have is about the people to drive the equipment as uh as that comes back to.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:31.599
Uh does there seem to be a supply of uh of potential folks or or folks who maybe are already able to do it that don't have equipment right now to come back to to operate it when uh that time comes?
00:34:32.400 --> 00:34:40.719
Yeah, so this is one where there's been some really good academic research that looks at like where do people you know come from when they enter trucking?
00:34:41.039 --> 00:34:50.400
And I and I think the challenge has been is there has been a narrative developed that this is all immigrant workforce right now.
00:34:50.559 --> 00:34:52.639
Like I see that sort of that narrative.
00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:57.360
It seems to be, it's at least to me how I interpret a lot of what people say.
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:01.519
But the evidence really has never suggested that that's the case.
00:35:01.760 --> 00:35:04.960
Folks enter trucking from a wide variety of professions.
00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:09.679
No, it's often not a first career, but somebody gets fired from an office job.
00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:12.960
They say, you know what, I don't want to work in an office, I'm gonna do something different.
00:35:13.119 --> 00:35:18.000
I've heard through the grapevine, through something, that hey, this is a market that needs drivers.
00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:25.679
Um, you know, folks who are, you know, for hire owner operators that also have other skills.
00:35:25.840 --> 00:35:26.960
Hey, the market's down.
00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:30.320
I don't drive my truck, market hops up, market picks up.
00:35:30.559 --> 00:35:35.199
I stop doing whatever else I was doing, I'm gonna get back and I'm gonna start driving again.
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:36.960
So it's gonna take time.
00:35:37.039 --> 00:35:42.800
You've had a lot of driver training schools shut down, so that that's again another constraint in the pipeline.
00:35:43.039 --> 00:35:51.119
But you will get folks who will say, you know what, this is a better job opportunity than what where I'm currently employed.
00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:54.000
And so it will take time.
00:35:54.159 --> 00:36:23.119
Um, but there's a great paper, um, it's publicly public domain, but it's by uh Kristen Monaco, who was at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a good friend and co-author of mine, Steven Burks, um, who's at the University of Minnesota Morris from 2019 that actually looked at where people entered trucking from, and it isn't the picture that necessarily gets conveyed, but this was with population level data and you know, good examples, forklift drivers.
00:36:23.199 --> 00:36:25.280
They interact with truckers quite frequently.
00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:30.159
You know, somebody hears and says, hey, you know, it's a really good time to become a truck driver, guess what?
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:32.960
They decide that they're gonna become a truck driver.
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:37.360
And so you have a lot of folks who enter the profession that way.
00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:47.679
Um, you know, when you look overall, what I'm gonna call sort of the, and I still hate the term, but sort of the blue-collar economy, it is not great right now.
00:36:47.840 --> 00:36:50.320
Housing construction is not that strong.
00:36:50.559 --> 00:36:54.159
Factory jobs are not being added very robustly.
00:36:54.239 --> 00:36:58.559
We're not seeing wholesale jobs being added at a very robust clip.
00:36:58.880 --> 00:37:07.440
Um, where housing jobs have actually been declining from where sort of the peak that they reached in 2022.
00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:20.320
And so there are possibilities for, you know, that because that part of the job market is equally not doing well, that since trucking is doing well, that will attract people to it.
00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:22.880
But again, this process takes time.
00:37:23.199 --> 00:37:25.840
Um, but trucking's like any labor market.
00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:33.280
Um, you know, people can make a better wage there than they can in a comparable profession, they'll shift over to it.
00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:53.760
So getting back to the uh fuel discussion a little bit more, too, because one other piece that uh that we haven't talked about here, but I know you you mentioned recently on uh LinkedIn is that period that we were in earlier in the year when prices were elevated, we still had a lot of reserves out there.
00:37:54.079 --> 00:37:57.360
Um that's not so much the case anymore.
00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:06.159
Yes, so that that is where, you know, especially globally, we entered this year with very ample stocks of crude oil.
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:09.360
A lot of that has been exhausted.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:18.079
There's some open question in terms of uh from the strategic petroleum reserve standpoint, how low we can go.
00:38:18.639 --> 00:38:23.679
No, I've seen estimates as low as 50, we can go down to 50 million barrels.
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:31.519
I've seen other estimates that say that it can't really go much more below 250 million barrels.
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:36.079
But you know, right now we're at about 319 million barrels.
00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:42.719
So uh depending on how fast we want to do drawdowns, um, you know, we face constraints.
00:38:42.880 --> 00:39:17.119
The Japanese have released a lot of their inventory, and so we don't have much buffer, but then the other big thing is that we're you know worried about now is um Ansra'ala, which is sort of the proper name for the Houthis and Yemen, their announcement of the embargo on Saudi Arabian oil exports that are leaving the Red Sea primarily through the port of Yambu, which has become so important because prior to the war, Yambu may have exported about 2 million barrels of crude a day.
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:21.519
That's increased to 7 million barrels because of the East-West pipeline.
00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:47.679
Now, if you sort of take VLCC capacity out of the equation because that can't transit the Suez Canal, and you bottle that up in there, if you remove another, let's say by the time you start getting some Suez Max tankers in there to offset it, let's say you move remove another three to four million barrels of oil a day beyond what we've now, you know, remove from Hormuz again.
00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:54.960
And right before we started filming this, uh, Kuwait had announced a product tanker had been struck by a projectile.
00:39:55.119 --> 00:40:02.800
It's had to have been abandoned, crews have been rescued by lifeboats or uh by tugboats type of situation.
00:40:03.679 --> 00:40:09.199
You take another 4 million barrels a day, let's say four or five million barrels a day out.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:12.000
You then take the Hormuz traffic out.
00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:14.960
That's a rough situation to be in.
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:20.960
But my bigger concern is not just actually crude oil, it's global refinery capacity.
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:31.599
Because we have this sort of odd situation in that China importing less crude oil means their refineries are running less and they're not exporting as much.
00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:35.440
So on the refined product side, you've got a China constraint.
00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:44.960
You have Ukraine having knocked out, I've seen estimates from a third to up to a half of Russian refining capacity.
00:40:45.119 --> 00:40:51.199
And they were the, I believe, the world's second biggest exporter of refined product after the US.
00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:54.559
And so you've had those two impacts.
00:40:54.800 --> 00:41:00.800
You've got the Middle East refiner capacity that's not running because that can't be pipelined out.
00:41:01.039 --> 00:41:03.039
So that's all stuck.
00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:13.519
And then you have US refineries running at breakneck pace, Canadian refineries running at breakneck pace, to the point we've been delaying maintenance here in the US.
00:41:13.679 --> 00:41:25.440
When you look at where capacity utilization is at right now compared to historical levels, which means at some point you've got to maintain those refineries and you're gonna have to do a little bit more intensive maintenance.
00:41:25.679 --> 00:41:33.440
So for me, the big issue right now is we have a refined product, the refined product situation is much worse than the crude oil situation.
00:41:33.599 --> 00:41:38.400
And the problem is the refined product piece is not something there's a quick fix for.
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:46.159
And so this is where you know I am quite worried on that refined product side.
00:41:46.400 --> 00:41:55.840
And then, yes, I mean, if the US, let's say we start getting the crude oil, the um strategic petroleum reserve down to the point we can't really release much more.
00:41:56.159 --> 00:42:18.719
If you take another, you know, call that 0.8 to 1 million barrels a day out of the equation, and you've lost four or five million because of the Yanbu situation, and the Gulf is down, and Venezuela is not producing as much because of the terrible earthquake they had, this is all not a good combination.
00:42:19.119 --> 00:42:25.119
Because at some point, China has to come back to the market, we believe to some degree.
00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:41.039
And the most important thing for everybody watching to understand is the reason that crude prices came down from where they were at in May was because China dropped their imports by potentially six million barrels a day.
00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:45.840
We're not sure how much of that is, they're not filling their strategic reserve.
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:52.880
They've switched the petrochemical complex over to coal-based feedstock as opposed to oil-based feedstock.
00:42:53.199 --> 00:43:01.519
Demand versus permanent demand destruction versus call it temporary demand destruction because we're drawing on reserves.
00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:10.960
We don't have a full accounting of that, but I don't think anybody believes China can keep importing 6 million barrels a day less than what they've been importing.
00:43:11.440 --> 00:43:20.320
And so even if that has to come back up 2 million, uh you can start doing the math here and say this is this is not a good situation that we're in.
00:43:20.559 --> 00:43:29.840
And so it it is we we are not we are not uh all is not well in the energy complex, um, to say the least at the moment.
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:38.719
Definitely inflationary, which is going to hold the Fed back from decreasing rates and helping us on the housing front and and various other places as well.
00:43:39.679 --> 00:43:40.639
Nope, exactly.
00:43:40.719 --> 00:43:42.960
And that's that's going to be the issue as well.
00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:48.000
As you know, we we had a little bit of this respite, things were were looking better.
00:43:48.159 --> 00:43:54.320
You know, I I like to joke that I think uh the New York Fed president saying that inflation had peaked in June.
00:43:54.400 --> 00:43:58.400
That I'm guessing he's gonna regret having made that statement.
00:43:58.639 --> 00:44:27.519
Because even prior Prior to this conflict, there were concerns about overall inflationary patterns due and due almost entirely to this just in economics we call it this the idea of a soft budget constraint, and that if you have you know investors willing to basically just pour darn near infinite dollars into a sector, you will generate too much demand, and that's going to cause prices to get pulled up.
00:44:27.679 --> 00:44:29.920
And that's what we've seen with memory chips.
00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:54.559
Um when you look at, you know, take Micron as an example, a company that three years ago was losing money, they had a negative gross margin to go from last year in calendar Q2 having$3.5 billion of um you know gross margin to this year going to$35.1 billion in gross margin.
00:44:54.719 --> 00:45:08.480
Think about that, a 10x increase in your overall profits while your cost of goods sold went up only 10% from like 5.8 to 6.1 or something like that.
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:12.000
It was like 5.4 to 6.1 billion dollars.
00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:18.960
And so what you've seen is memory prices have gone up so much, it's why Apple raised their prices in July.
00:45:19.199 --> 00:45:28.480
We're gonna see further price increases for consumer goods or consumer electronics as we move through this year, but also on the producer price side.
00:45:28.559 --> 00:45:46.559
Um, I was talking to a major producer of um equipment and they make their own printed circuit boards, and they said their their internal price to make printed circuit boards has doubled since December because of the pricing for higher components.
00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:49.360
And my my question to them was said, what'd you do?
00:45:49.440 --> 00:45:52.480
And they go, Well, you know, you know who we are, you know we're a market leader.
00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:54.320
Our list prices went up.
00:45:54.719 --> 00:46:07.280
And they're just like, We're as are these prices get higher and higher, we're just raising our list prices right now because a lot of our product is going to support the build out of the fiscal ecosystem for AI.
00:46:07.599 --> 00:46:12.400
And so we're not worried we're gonna see demand being decreased.
00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:28.000
Um and so that's where you sort of have this almost you know bad cycle of all this money floods in, all this demand's created, inputs go higher, but because it will flood even more money in.
00:46:28.159 --> 00:46:36.159
There's really no decision of like, hey, should we keep investing in this if memory chips are 400% more expensive?
00:46:36.880 --> 00:46:50.639
For most of us, I mean, imagine what would happen in the trucking space if somebody would start saying, okay, well, equipment's now 75% more expensive, you wouldn't see the same type of capex, but we're not necessarily seeing the slowdown there.
00:46:51.039 --> 00:47:02.320
And so the Fed was honestly already in a bad situation, I would argue, in February of this year, when you looked at where we were at, and now we're just in a very bad situation.
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:04.639
Um, I mean, I I've been blunt.
00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:21.280
I believe the Fed should hike this July with where things are at, and they should certainly hike in September, because unfortunately, inflation negatively affects everybody, whereas um any resulting job loss is more sort of sector specific.
00:47:21.840 --> 00:47:36.719
And if the entire goal of monetary policy is to keep bubbles from forming, you look at what's going on right now with hyperscale or CapEx, put a chart up of that and say, boy, that is consistent with too much exuberance.
00:47:38.559 --> 00:47:42.719
Comes full circle with the uh the AI conversation here.
00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:47.760
It really uh it's uh it's driving everything right now, and it's very interesting to see.
00:47:48.079 --> 00:47:56.000
It will be very interesting to see how that uh progresses going into next year and uh what what else does happen underneath it uh as well.
00:47:56.159 --> 00:48:04.800
Um before we let you go, tell folks where they can find more from you and and find more about uh your program as well.
00:48:05.519 --> 00:48:09.840
Yeah, so best place to reach me is uh LinkedIn.
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:12.639
Um just shoot me a message or connect with me.
00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:22.800
Um terms of our program, Michigan State, um sort of the best place for any information that is just you know sort of simple Google search um on that front.
00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:27.440
Um you know, so I'd say kind of kind of that space there.
00:48:27.519 --> 00:48:35.679
Um one thing I will say is especially if organizations are looking for sort of tailored executive education programs, that is something that we do.
00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:39.280
We've got several clients right now that uh we work with.
00:48:39.440 --> 00:48:51.920
Um and so if that's something that you know comes to mind as you think sort of non-traditional continuous development of workforce, um you know, you can always reach out to me and I can connect you uh with the folks.
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:54.400
I'm no longer an administrator, thank heavens.
00:48:55.440 --> 00:48:58.159
I did my three years of administrative purgatory.
00:48:58.239 --> 00:49:00.079
Um academia is a weird place.
00:49:00.239 --> 00:49:03.199
Uh you kind of step up for a while and then you step back.
00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:09.840
There's really no promotional ladder, um, unlike most other uh types of corporate hierarchies.
00:49:10.239 --> 00:49:13.760
But um, you know, we we do a lot of things like that.
00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:20.400
It's always personally to me the most fun to teach um or programs like that because folks will really push back on you with things.
00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:25.119
Um but yeah, so those are the sort of the best places to reach me out.
00:49:25.599 --> 00:49:26.159
Well, Dr.
00:49:26.239 --> 00:49:27.519
Miller, thanks again for joining us.
00:49:27.679 --> 00:49:28.239
Really appreciate it.
00:49:28.400 --> 00:49:29.280
Yeah, thank you.
00:49:29.599 --> 00:49:31.360
And thanks for having me.
00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:43.119
It was a wide-reaching conversation, and we we ended it knowing that we still had a a lot more meat on the bone with uh the tariff issue that just came up.
00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:48.960
And and I haven't really checked the news yet since we uh since we pressed stop a few minutes ago.
00:49:49.119 --> 00:49:53.760
So I'm not sure, not sure if we missed anything else that uh that might come up.
00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:06.320
But uh yeah, it it's interesting just how much world events, local events, uh a little bit of everything just intertwines with where we're at in in the freight market.
00:50:06.559 --> 00:50:13.920
And uh yes, we're in a certain situation right now with pricing and everything, but how long is that enduring?
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:14.480
Who knows?
00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:15.440
Who knows?
00:50:15.599 --> 00:50:23.360
But we certainly did cover a wide range of topics, and Professor Miller had a ton of different angles to look at things.
00:50:23.599 --> 00:50:28.960
Um a lot of the things uh he had a different perspective on, which was which is good to hear some of that.
00:50:29.119 --> 00:50:39.760
But if people want to figure things out uh to the best of their ability, I mean pulling in uh Jason Miller's information via LinkedIn, as he suggested, is a fantastic place.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:51:03.360
Um he is he he has he does a great job in terms of taking super complex topics and being able to write them in a way to you know about four or five paragraphs and then implication at the last paragraph really helps narrow things down and he does the same thing as he as he did um this time and the last time we had him on the on the podcast.
00:51:03.519 --> 00:51:07.119
So always super excited when we have the opportunity to to bring Dr.
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:12.079
Miller in and go through um his thought process and and where he sees the freight market.
00:51:12.880 --> 00:51:13.440
Yeah, yeah.
00:51:13.519 --> 00:51:30.320
I know reading a lot of his posts, uh I would not be able to begin to decipher a lot of the charts that he's got that he's looking at, and he's able to you know jump through all these different subject matters so easily, and then, as you said, distill them to a point where you can actually go, okay, makes sense.
00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:31.039
I understand.
00:51:31.119 --> 00:51:32.159
I understand where he's coming from.
00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:34.000
I I can at least pretend to understand it.
00:51:34.079 --> 00:51:35.599
I have an idea.
00:51:36.079 --> 00:51:38.480
So uh again, thanks to Dr.
00:51:38.639 --> 00:51:45.679
Miller for joining us on this episode of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast, and thank you for joining us as well.
00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:51.039
Please do rate and review us, subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcasts.
00:51:51.199 --> 00:51:53.679
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00:51:53.840 --> 00:51:57.039
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00:51:57.360 --> 00:52:02.559
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00:52:02.719 --> 00:52:07.599
Uh, please do drop us a comment and uh set up automatic downloads.
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:08.719
That's always good as well.
00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:18.719
And you can also drop us an email at podcast at intechlogistics.com if you have a more lengthy comment or something you want to take off uh the public forums.
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.280
And visit www.intechlogistics.com to learn more about intechlogistics, the company.
00:52:25.519 --> 00:52:28.079
For Rick Lagore, I'm Kevin Baxter.
00:52:28.239 --> 00:52:31.599
Thanks very much for joining us, and we will see you again soon.
