Battling the Nation’s Economy and Health Is No Easy Task
Nine years ago, you were spending the weekend with your besties in Baton Rouge living up your newly turned 21 life.
Eight years ago, you were returning from a trip to Pensacola with a bag of your favorite seafood.
Seven years ago, you booked the hotel for your mother’s birthday trip to Georgia just days before you left.
Five years ago, you were preparing to sign on your little Louisiana lake shack and officially became residents.
Four years ago, you were traveling to Alabama for the Fourth of July with a sick little poodle.
Two years ago, you were making a tour of north Alabama and Tennessee after celebrating the wedding nuptials of sweet friends.
One year ago, you were galavanting about Alaska in record breaking heat.
And today, you drove out of your hometown behind a car that looked just like your mama’s, and you completely lost your composure.
Mostly, however, today you hope to have a successful trip to the grocery store. You hope to find the special kind of butter you like to use when you make a family birthday cake. You hope to find those really difficult to locate disinfecting wipe that you took for granted and had in the backseat of all your cars.
Consumers Rely on the Products Delivered by Truckers Across America
You often look at your life in terms of milestones and achievements.
You have never been in a situation before, however, when you considered finding the products that you need at the local grocery store an achievement.
Year by year, you made lists of travel goals and plans. You and your husband worked really hard at your full time jobs so you could enjoy checking the accomplishments off the list.
Reflecting on what life looked like at certain times, and how much you have grown or changed, or aged has always helped you keep things in perspecitive. You have to say that, though, so far this year it seems like 2020 is saving its shining moments for the second half, because the first half seemed to really be disproportionate in its less than stellar moments.
In a time when the nation is struggling in so many ways there are many places you can look to see specific challenges that while they may not seem that much of an inconvenience really add up. For example, as consumers across the country find themselves waiting for both large and small companies to acquire the trailer resources they need to meet some of the biggest demands, many shelves remain empty. And while even the largest trucking companies may not be able to find the new and used reefer trailers that they want, there are many times when being in just the right place at the right time can be beneficial.
Looking back, of course, the decision to buy reefer trailers at the beginning of February was a decision that helped many companies succeed. Instead of desperately searching for new and used reefer trailers now when they are so difficult to locate, the most fortunate transportation companies had already made these purchases.
In the best of time reefer trailer costs may have seemed prohibitive, but today the price of even used reefer trailers exceeds most thresholds the industry has seen in the past.
Research from the past indicates that as many as 500,000 reefer trailers are currently in operation in the U.S. And while there may have been many used reefer trailers sitting idle six months ago, in many cases all of these available trailers are now on the road trying to meet the demand of consumers who are facing a different kind of life. A life where the decision to travel to see your father who lives a mere three hours away may not be the right one. A life where lists of travel adventures have been replaced by lists of must find items from the grocery store.
The smartest people are not even willing to venture a guess about the near future, but if you are in the logistics business you likely know that the fact that the global refrigerated trailer market was expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% between 2016 and 2022 likely now seems very conservative.
