Price Trends
Pricing Across the Transportation Modes
-- Logistics Management, 11/1/2009
Source: Elizabeth Baatz, Thinking Cap Solutions. E-mail: ebaatz@alertdata.com
Trucking
Despite a 0.8% price cut in September, results for 2009’s Q3 shows that the U.S. trucking industry nonetheless managed to push prices up 1.2% from the previous quarter. However, overall trucking industry price tags still sit 6.3% below peak price levels set Q3 of 2008 when fuel surcharges ran rampant. For shippers of general freight using TL and LTL carriers, industry prices for both were up a bit in September. Quarterly trends, however, indicate LTL prices held steady in both Q2 and Q3 of 2009. That left LTL tags 4.1% below its 2008 peak. TL tags, meanwhile, increased 1.4% in Q3, but remained 9.5% below its peak. Our aggregate truck industry price forecast remains the same, down 4% in 2009, up 2.2% in 2010.
| % Change vs. | 1 month ago | 6 mos. ago | 1 yr. ago |
| General freight - local | -3.2 | 2.5 | -5.5 |
| Truckload | 0.7 | 1.8 | -8.1 |
| Less-than-truckload | 0.2 | 0.0 | -2.8 |
| Tanker & other specialized freight | -1.8 | 0.6 | -5.1 |
Air
U.S. owned airline companies managed to hike prices for flying cargo on scheduled flights by a meager 0.5% from August to September. After monthly price hikes of 6.6% and 5.1% the previous two months, climbing back up to 2008’s fuel-charged price levels will be a bumpy ride. The industry would have to push tags up 13.9% to return to previous peaks. Air freight charter companies managed to bump up average transaction prices by 2.9% in September. But air charter tags must ride a steep 16% ascent before matching July 2008’s peak price levels. September’s data didn’t deviate much from forecast estimates, so the price outlook for airfreight on scheduled flights remains down 8.6% in 2009, up 0.5% in 2010.
| % Change vs. | 1 month ago | 6 mos. ago | 1 yr. ago |
| Scheduled air freight | 0.5 | -0.3 | -12.2 |
| Chartered air freight & passenger | 2.9 | 2.6 | -14.6 |
| Domestic air courier | -0.9 | 5.5 | -13.5 |
| International air courier | 0.1 | 3.7 | -14.3 |
Water
Across the board, all the water transportation industries for which the U.S. Labor Department gathers data reported price increases in September. Domestic company surveys reported that prices increased 1.8% in September both for operators who ply inland waterways as well as those sailing on deep seas. All told, after three consecutive quarterly price cuts, the water transportation industry enjoyed a 1.2% quarterly price hike in the third quarter of 2009. Alas, aggregate water transport tags still sit 15.2% below peak levels set exactly a year ago in September 2008. Prices will be floating upward over the coming year, but our conservative bet calls for water transportation prices to be down 9.3% in 2009, up 1.3% in 2010.
| % Change vs. | 1 month ago | 6 mos. ago | 1 yr. ago |
| Deep-sea freight | 1.8 | -4.7 | -24.0 |
| Coastal & intercoastal freight | 0.1 | 7.2 | -3.1 |
| Grt. Lks.-St. Lawrence Seaway | 1.2 | 3.7 | -1.8 |
| Inland water freight | 1.8 | -3.2 | -17.5 |
Rail
Underscoring the difficulty of regaining pricing traction in today’s tenuous economic recovery, carload rail operators reported a 0.1% price cut from August to September. Intermodal rail freight companies, meanwhile, managed a 0.5% price hike. Looking at recent rail tags compared to August 2008’s peak levels show average transaction prices still off 8.4% for carload and 15.4% for intermodal. The rail price forecast assumes intermodal containers filled with imported cargo will improve, but it will be coming back from a low trough set last winter. Add in the U.S. banking industry’s dismal credit situation and we set the rail price forecast at down 5.8% in 2009, up 3.5% in 2010.
| % Change vs. | 1 month ago | 6 mos. ago | 1 yr. ago |
| Rail freight | -0.1 | 2.5 | -8.6 |
| Intermodal | 0.5 | 4.7 | -13.2 |
| Carload | -0.1 | 2.3 | -8.3 |
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