FedEx Freight - largest LTL provider starts furloughs this weekend. When they're normally looking for a pile of seasonal help to come aboard, they're letting guys take time off. And they're doing it without disposition of the rail situation where a strike would push truck rates to the moon.
Law enforcement calls that a "clue".
FurloughsYou have to remember that this is an inventory recession. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, over-bought on anything they could get their grubby hands on, just to make sure they had it on hand. Warehouses were all filled to the rafters, and mobile warehousing booming literally anywhere trailers and containers could be parked and stacked. People paid historically high prices for trucks to bring that stuff so they would be sure to have it..... all six to nine months earlier than in previous years.
It's not that shipping is slow, it's just that shipping moved up six months on the calendar. We're in the post-holiday shipping doldrums already.
