Bigger ships. While over 400 sailings have been canceled on key lanes since February, a new container ship is being launched: the Megamax. This giant ship is over 4 football fields long and hauls 24,000 containers (TEU).
More bankrupt carriers. While government payments are keeping smaller companies afloat, next comes insolvency as the economy will spin up too slowly to save them. Trucking companies with six or fewer trucks made up more than 90% of the carriers in the nearly $800 billion U.S. trucking market in 2018…Spot rates won’t rise fast enough…overall rates are down 8% from March alone.
Railroads are ready to spin up. Instead of furloughing employees, they have allowed them to take unpaid time off. Locomotives are maintained and ready to roll.
Parcel. The boom will continue.
More domestic manufacturing. If the virus didn’t shut down the car factories, the lack of parts from foreign suppliers would have! We’ll learn from these mistakes.
Oil. Depressed for 6 months – but diesel will be strongly priced.