This past week’s Freight Talk “Rate Trend of the Week” focused on the fact that Van Rates continue to dip as we enter the 3rd week of 2012, with “Memphis recording the only major market increase”.  While Trans-core did mention some high paying lanes out of Memphis, most major lane combo’s declined significantly, with Northern California seeing rates drop over 7%.  At Open Mile we are continuing to see rates decline as we called out in last week’s blog, which really is not that big of a surprise this time of year.  While we do not operate throughout all regions of the country, we can certainly confirm a decrease in demand with rates dropping throughout much of the country.

At Open Mile, we saw the largest decrease in rates this past week out of the Columbus and Cincinnati Markets, with rates to the east coast decreasing close to 5% and shipments to the West Coast decreasing just over 3%.  This drop in price was surprising to see, because rates off of the East and West Coasts this past week experienced some of the largest drops in prices.  We also reached out to a few carriers to confirm market conditions, with one mid-size carrier out of Chicago telling us that they are basically just trying to “keep their trucks moving”, because conditions are about as slow as he’s ever seen.

While things are certainly stable right now a sudden ice storm on the East Coast or Midwest could certainly flip capacity very quickly.  We’ll continue to report on capacity trends throughout the US over the next few months, to determine what if any capacity/price shifts will happen in 2012.