There’s a lot going on in the world of trucking at the moment – with the sluggish start to what’s generally considered to be the “peak season” for freight volumes one of the more worrisome items.
But many other issues (especially regulatory ones) and trends are developing as well.
Probably the biggest topic to date is the ongoing presidential election and how it might impact the transportation industry as the whole.
[We're not going to comment or link to stories about the battle between Trump and Clinton in this space today. There's been enough ink and vitriol spilled over it already.]
Bud Wright executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recently offered his perspective on what the two major presidential candidates are saying – and in many cases not saying – about transportation on the campaign trail. Here are a few of his thoughts in that direction:
On a completely separate topic, the used Class 8 truck market seems to be heating up, according to Chris Visser, senior commercial truck analyst at NADA Used Car Guide.
"Overall, depreciation in the auction lanes remained mild to moderate, with late-model trucks averaging about 2.6% depreciation per month,” he explained. “That is substantially better than the 5% depreciation per month seen last year, although absolute prices are down more than 30% over last year.”
You can view more of Visser’s perspective in the video clip below.
And now, switching gears again, let’s jump over to the impending introduction of Proposed Category 11 or PC-11 oils, which, of course, are no longer “proposed” but are actually “in being” as CK-4 and FA-4.
There’s a lot of stuff to digest about those two new oils – go here and here for just some of the many stories we’ve done about them – but below is a nice little video that wraps the basics up in less than 3 minutes:
Just don’t try any of that in a big rig. Unless, of course, you are Mike Ryan:
Happy trails to you!
