The latest edition of the Weekly Report is here! We’re a day late this week due to the holiday weekend, but better late than never right? Check out the full report for the details on clicks, searches, and a new story of the week. This week’s story – retailers unlikely to enter the Christmas shopping period with pre-Covid inventory to sales ratios.
How do you like your Weekly Report?
We provide the Weekly Report in numerous formats every week. Which one is right for you? Watch the latest reports on our Recruiting Resources or YouTube pages, use our Numbers at a Glance section for quick visual references, download the Weekly Report PDF (available below), read the transcript, or listen to the audio version of the July 8, 2021, Weekly Report below.
Check out the Listening In: Building the Perfect Call Series
Numbers At A Glance – July 8, 2021
[one_half]
Truck Driver Searches |
| WoW: ∇ Down 7% |
|---|
| MoM: Δ Up 2% |
| YoY: Δ Up 6% |
Load Volume |
| WoW: ∇ Down 9% |
|---|
Volume by Segment |
| WoW: Dry Van Δ Up .3% |
|---|
| WoW: Refrigerated Δ Up 2% |
| WoW: Flatbed ∇ Down 16% |
Spot Rates |
| WoW: Δ Up 2¢ per mile |
|---|
[/one_half]
[one_half_last]
Clicks On Truck Driver Postings |
| WoW: ∇ Down 7% |
|---|
| MoM: ∇ Down 8% |
| YoY: Δ Up 3% |
Truck Postings |
| WoW: ∇ Down 1% |
|---|
Truck Posting by Segment |
| WoW: Dry Van ∇ Down 6% |
| WoW: Refrigerated Δ Up 1% |
| WoW: Flatbed Δ Up 1% |
Rates by Segment |
| WoW: Dry Van Δ Up 7¢ per mile |
|---|
| WoW: Refrigerated Δ Up 7¢ per mile |
| WoW: Flatbed Δ Up 1¢ per mile |
[/one_half_last]
[box]
July 8, 2021 Driver Recruiting Insights
Would you like to have your own copy of the trucking industry data? All of the information covered in this week’s report for July 8, 2021, is available for your convenience in PDF form below.
Click the image to download the July 8, 2021, Driver Recruiting Insights PDF.
Click for more information on the “Retail Inventory Build Situation.”
[/box]
Weekly Report – July 8, 2021 Transcript
Welcome to the weekly report. I hope you all had a fantastic Fourth of July weekend (happy belated birthday America!). As you may have noticed … we’re a little late this week. Sorry about that, but the holiday weekend delayed some of the statistical data and our usual filming schedule. I apologize if any of you were searching unsuccessfully for us yesterday, but we’re here now. For Randall-Reilly, I’m Joshua Miller, now let’s get to it.
THIS WEEK IN JOB BOARD SEARCHES AND CLICKS
Truck driver searches were down 7% WoW, but up 2% MoM and 6% YoY. Clicks on truck driver postings were down 7% WoW, down 8% MoM, and up 3% YoY.
Last week saw both searches and clicks drop by 7%. Clicks on company drivers and owner-operator job postings declined but clicks for team and inexperienced/trainee drivers increased. Now remember we’re talking about last week here, so the upcoming 4th of July holiday likely had a role to play in those decreases.
THIS WEEK IN FREIGHT
Load volume was down by 9% WoW. Although refrigerated rose by 2% and dry van inched up by .3% … flatbed brought the overall number down by falling 16% WoW.
Truck availability fell by 1% WoW. This time the dip can be blamed on dry van. Dry van availability fell by 6%, while both refrigerated, and flatbed were up by 1% WoW.
Traditionally June represents the peak of the spot market followed by steady declines. That trend was broken, however, in 2020 as the economy began to rebound from lockdowns. Though last week was down and a little weak overall, much of that can be contributed to the holiday.
Moving forward with strong consumer demand, a recovering industrial sector, multiple supply chain disruptions, and tight driver capacity, we have no real reason to expect any seasonal weakness as we continue through 2021. But coming off that down holiday week, it could take a few more weeks to really know if any true seasonality is still at play in the current spot market.
NOW FOR OUR STORY OF THE WEEK
As of right now, it’s looking like retailers are not likely to enter the all-important Christmas shopping period with pre-pandemic inventory to sales ratios.
The ratio of inventories to cost of goods sold (COGS) for the retail trade (less motor vehicles and parts) are down pretty substantially from typical levels.
Sales in March of this year were 19.5% above those in March of 2019, and April sales topped the 2019 levels by 16.3%. That sounds pretty good, right? We’re turning the corner, people are spending money, trucks are moving … all is right with the world. But as the sunshine scooter would say, “not so fast my friend!”
The problem is real inventories are only up by .9% and 1% from March and April of 2019. There’s a big difference in the sales and inventory numbers there, right? So, the question becomes just how much must retailers replenish inventory if they are to bring their real inventories to the COGS statistical level of October 2019 this year? And we’re using October here because that’s typically when retailers are prepping for that big peak in sales that comes with the holiday shopping period.
Based on a lot of number crunching and math that is way above my head, it turns out retailers would need to obtain approximately $190 billion in goods relative to the same period in 2019. And if you’re wondering, that equates to a 12.5% increase in goods compared to 2019. Given where things stand right now … it seems highly unlikely that retailers will be able to hit that goal.
The good news for carriers is because retailers are a little bit behind the eight ball here, any slack in the freight market between now and October will likely be filled with retailers scrambling to rebuild their inventory levels. Which translates to very favorable freight conditions for the carriers.
And that does it. A lot of percentages and dates in there, but if you want to dig into where the numbers like that $190 billion came from, we’ll have some info on the paper it was taken from in our Weekly Trucking Insight PDF. I’ll also leave you a link so you can access it yourself if you’d like.
If you’re watching on YouTube, you can find the link to our Insight PDF down in the description, over on the blog if you scroll down the page, you’ll see a clearly labeled section with a nice picture – just click on that and presto. Speaking of our blog and YouTube page, go ahead and poke around a little bit, there’s lots of other great driver recruiting content available for you there, such as a brand-new Listening in with Seth.
The latest episode is part of an ongoing series where Seth not only listens in on recruiting calls and dissects them a little bit, but he is currently working his way through to tell you exactly how to build and have the perfect recruiting phone call. The newest episode is part 2 in that series. We’ll leave some links for that as well, and if you haven’t checked out part 1 yet … what are you waiting for?
If you like what you see on our YouTube page don’t forget to like, subscribe, and click that little notification bell so you know exactly when we post new video content. Over on our blog page, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter. That goes out the first week of the month and we feature some of our newest or “freshest” content there.
All right, the shameless plug is now over. Thanks again for joining us for the Weekly Report, sorry we were a day late this week – the 4th kind of threw us off a little, but we will be back on Wednesday morning next week. Until then, have a great week everybody!
