Trucking news and briefs for Friday, Aug. 27, 2021:
FTR’s Shippers Conditions Index (SCI) for June, as reported in the August Shippers Update, fell back to a reading of -12.0 reflecting a continuing tough environment for shippers. Shipper market conditions remain highly negative.
Freight rates improved slightly during June, but it was not enough to offset tighter capacity utilization and little change in other components – volume and fuel costs – to hold off the drop in the SCI for the month. FTR’s latest freight volume outlook is slightly weaker at 6.3% growth year-over-year in 2021 down from the previous +6.9% projection.
“The capacity situation is expected to remain tight into 2022 and while rate increases are expected to moderate their rates of growth through the next several months, they will for the most part remain in positive territory meaning shippers’ rate relief might feel good, but it is a matter of degrees as rates will still be going up year over year," said Todd Tranausky, vice president of rail and intermodal at FTR.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is requesting emergency approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget to collect information from motor carriers using the COVID-19 hours of service waiver.
The waiver has been in place in some form since mid-March 2020, allowing carriers and truck drivers providing direct relief to the ongoing emergency to operate outside of normal hours of service regulations. The emergency declaration has been extended several times over the last year-and-a-half and is currently set to expire Aug. 31. It’s unclear whether the agency will extend the waiver again.
FMCSA said that neither the emergency declaration nor the regulations covering emergency declarations require that motor carriers and drivers operating under the declaration report their operation to FMCSA.
