Freight Market Remains Soft Amidst Produce Season + High Cargo Theft
Gurvir and Caroline talk through freight market indicators and analyze the decline in diesel prices and its impact on the industry. As they navigate through the latest trends and forecasts, they shed light on the current state of the freight market, which remains relatively stationary amidst the commencement of the produce season.
Send your questions to hello@bobtail.com to be featured in a future episode!
Links & Resources:
- National average diesel prices
- Average diesel prices by state
- National truckload index, Freightwaves
- DAT Trucking Industry Trendlines
- April Cass data shows no improvement in freight demand
- In a tough trucking-business environment, owner-operators must improve efficiency to compete
- Wave of cargo thefts grows; up 46% over first quarter of 2023
- Renewable Diesel — A Catalyst for Decarbonization
Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Week in Trucking, the podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week in 30 minutes or less. This week we’re talking about diesel prices, freight market trends, We’re also talking about the updates to Cass data, and some tips for trucking business owners to improve efficiency, as well as the enormous spike in cargo theft. Hey Gurvir, how’s it going?
Gurvir: Doing pretty well. It’s May. This year is like flying by. And I think at the beginning of every month, I’m always looking at reports to see whether the freight market improved or not. But this is the fifth month of the year. I think it’s we’re halfway through. It’s going by pretty quick.
Caroline: We are indeed. I do have some good news about diesel prices though. So the national average diesel price is 3. 935. Yesterday was the same. It’s down slightly from last week, But pretty far down from last [00:01:00] month, and definitely down from last year as well. The cheapest states to buy diesel in are Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, South Dakota, and Arkansas this week.
So Colorado dropped down. I think they’re now 10th cheapest or so. And the five states with the highest average diesel prices are the same as always. California, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. and DC. So this is pretty big news in the diesel market came out on Monday. The benchmark diesel price is down for the first, for the fifth week in a row. The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, their average weekly retail diesel price fell by 4. 6 cents on Monday to 3. 848 and that means it’s down 21 cents, more than 21 cents over the last five weeks. So this is really good news if you are struggling as an owner operator [00:02:00] or a trucking business owner in general.
Any dip in fuel prices is going to be good news.
Gurvir: totally. And I think one of the figures that I saw, by the way, there’s different agencies that, show data on the weekly averages. I also saw the number 384. Last week we talked about, hey, can we hit 350s? I think we’ve had two consecutive weeks of pretty big drops. Again.
Freight market is not improving, and we’ll get into that. At least there is some relief from diesel, right? At least the diesel prices are coming down, and that adds to the bottom line. So this is something really good to see. I hope it, it continues. And I know I, read some projections that the EIA, which is the environmental agencies projecting that Towards the end of the year we might see an increase, but for the next few weeks I think we’ll hover around these numbers, so that’s a good thing.
Caroline: Yeah, definitely. That Energy Information Administration has a ton of information on this. If you want more information, we’ll link it in the description of this episode. One of the things that we talked about or mentioned [00:03:00] last week was that as temperatures rise, you have less demand for heating fuels.
Heating fuels are similar to diesel. And so when you have less demand for a product, the price goes down pretty naturally. But something else that I thought was interesting that I think Freightwaves was reporting on is that part of the reason that fuel prices may be coming down is the renewable diesel market that Environmental regulations have prompted refiners to convert crude oil processing facilities to produce renewable diesel, and so higher use of renewable diesel cuts down on demand for regular diesel and thus lower prices.
Another study just came out about, renewable diesel catalyst for decarbonization by the American Transportation Research Institute. Thank you. Super interesting. I’m still getting through it. So haven’t gotten through all of it yet, but we’ll definitely report on that.
Any interesting findings there for the next couple of weeks?[00:04:00]
Gurvir: No, totally. I think one of the things that we talked about last episode. I think two weeks ago was the renewable diesel versus electrification of trucks, and I think the renewable diesel the Advantages look pretty promising in terms of pricing, cost and also less emissions so let’s see how that goes.
But yeah I do see a trend in the future more towards renewable diesel than electrification.
Caroline: Definitely. And just in what I’ve read so far, the production of renewable diesel has increased incredibly in the last two years, which is not really something that I’ve seen before. Heard about a whole lot. You hear a lot about electrification and not so much about renewable diesel production. So I’m interested to know what is the, what are the different and environmental impacts of renewable diesel as to electric trucks, really interested in learning about this more.
So stay tuned if you’re interested in that [00:05:00] as well. And Freight Waves is coming out with a lot of really cool information about this. They have a whole newsletter about trucking tech. Which is a really great resource for information on trends in trucking technology.
Gurvir: Yep. Should we get into the freight market?
Caroline: Let’s do it.
Gurvir: Awesome. Don’t really have good news here. The spot market is still soft and continues to pose some challenges for small carriers. Proto season got kicked off. We saw some rates that rate hikes in Florida. We’re seeing some rate hikes in California.
But Spot Market is still pretty, pretty tough. So what are some things that have changed from last week? So Spot Load Posts. So Load Posts have gone down by nearly 1%. But the truck posts have gone up by four percent. So those things are heading in the wrong direction. And if you look at the national spot rates drive in rates were still hovering around 1.99 a mile. Same as April, not much of a change from April. Flatbed has gone up by one cent. So in April we were at 252 per mile, in [00:06:00] May we are at 253, so not significant changes there. Reefer, obviously because of the produce season, has seen the biggest jump, so we’re about 4 cents higher but not significantly higher either.
February, reefer was 242, so we’re still lower than February rates even when the produce season is kicking off there is a small increase, but relatively it’s not much. Yeah, the soft market is still here. And it’s not nearly going away as, as fast as we would thought.
I think, again, January was a, was a pump fake. And we thought that January, market is about to turn. But now it’s been February, March, April, and we’re still in May. And we’re still not seeing that market is turning. So that’s not really a good news. I know we’re getting closer and closer.
And the hardest thing to do is predict exactly when we’re going to come out. But at least it’s not getting worse. That is some positive news.
Caroline: Yeah. Yeah, those rates are rough. And just a 4 percent, or 4 cent increase for reefers from April to May, that’s a lot. That’s surprising, right? That’s, barely, what, [00:07:00] a half? That’s nothing and we’re seeing a lot more produce coming out. So what can you tell us about other indicators that might explain why rates aren’t going up?
Gurvir: Certain areas you’re gonna see a higher than then, One and a half percent or four cents for example, California, Florida, but these are just to make sure these are averages across The US right so in certain areas the refer rates are going down So yeah, you could experience higher rate jumps in like Florida wherever protoseason is kicking off but I think also just looking at the national average tells us a lot, right?
Are the overall rates moving up or are these just seasonally adjusted rates? So yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t think the produce season is having an impact that we, that I personally thought we would and the market is just really not shifting at this point and that makes me get into my next story.
The story that I want to share today is that one of the key points that we look at is the Cass data. It’s a Cass index. Cass is a company that sort of processes invoices. I think they do about 38 billion a [00:08:00] year. So they have significant amount of data on invoices to publish an index every month to tell us whether the rates are moving up or down.
So the Cass Freight Index came out for April again, May, It’s going to come out in June, but April showed that there was a 1. 6 percent decrease in shipments. And about a 4 percent year over year decline. So from March to April, there was actually a 1. 6 percent right. Not a significant decrease, but it just means that the market is really not turning.
The severe winter storms and the Baltimore bridge collapse. Reduced trade in trade demand in April as well. Private fleets are also competing for back hauls and on, on spot market. That also leaves less freight out for owner operators. So you have private fleets that, that usually haul their own goods.
A lot of the times they actually, calls with off of the spot market, right? Why come back empty when you’re delivering your own goods? Might as well just, cover up for fuel. And that can also drive down rates because they’re not really running their fleet to, to make a profit.
They’re just [00:09:00] running their fleets to deliver goods and their own goods. So that has an impact on the spot market. And the overall, the expenditure, which is, how much how much is the, how much is the total spend in freight that has gone down about 16. 8 percent from last year, which makes sense, you can probably see like the rates are down about 16 to 20%.
Which means the annual spend on freight has gone down about 20%. Cass is saying about 16. 8. Overall not a huge positive sign. And then lastly, Schneider said that, this is some positive news that they had some positive contract rate renewals.
Again, this is not an indication that the market is turning, but it’s an indication that it’s not getting worse, right? So Schneider, when renewing their contract rates with some of the shippers, did not experience a huge negative impact. Decrease, in, in rates, I think the rates are steady and that sort of give them a positive outlook.
So yeah I think in summary, things are not improving right now. They’re just hovering around, 1 to 2 percent decline, 1 percent uptick here and [00:10:00] there, but overall we’re just staying stable.
Caroline: What you said about private fleets was really interesting. I remember an article maybe about a year ago or two years ago that was talking about the enormous increase that a lot of shippers were investing in their private fleets, and mainly because they saw a lot of disruption in their supply chains during the pandemic.
And to correct for that, they started investing in their own private fleets because they were having to pay really high rates on the freight market. to get their goods shipped back and forth. And so they started investing a lot. And now you’re seeing the result of that investment because those investments take time, right?
It takes time to build out teams, buy trucks, and hire people and, move your freight yourself. And so potentially that’s something that now the freight market is competing with that they weren’t a couple of years ago.
Gurvir: And trucking companies solve the inconsistency problem. What I mean by that is that if you’re a shipper and you know that you have certain consistent freight, I think [00:11:00] it’s actually beneficial to run your own private fleet.
The more consistency there is in freight and lanes, the cheaper it becomes to move. S you just can’t have too many spikes. And I think what certain shippers and manufacturers and these companies have done is they have their own private fleet to handle some of the freight, let’s say 30, 40% of the freight, and then the rest 60, 50% or 40 or whatever, the, their comfortable percentages, they outsource it.
And they’re able to, just really bring down the cost down, right? Because what shippers want is stability and want to make sure that they’re, they have consistency over price, right? And the freight market changes within a few months, like literally from, seven, eight months from today, we could be looking at a 20 percent increase in spot rates.
It’s unlikely right now given what we’re seeing, but what I’m saying is that sometimes those things do happen in spot markets. So I think it’s a good way for shippers to hedge against their supply chain costs.
Caroline: right. So you manage the freight that you know is going to need to be moved every week, every month, every year. The predictable stuff you handle with your own fleet. [00:12:00]
Gurvir: Yeah, exactly. If I’m a shipper and I know there’s a load, there’s ten loads to, New York every week, I might just, create a small team of dispatchers and just create a small trucking fleet within the company to, to run our own trade. It serves a lot of benefits than just hedging on cost.
Caroline: That brings me to the article that I wanted to share. This one was from Overdrive Online that in a tough trucking business environment, owner operators need to improve their efficiency. And this author gave a bunch of different efficiency tips for owner operators. One was to increase the quality of revenue that you get for your business.
And instead of trying to increase just the quantity of miles, when there’s a really good market and rates are really high, you can increase the miles that you’re running and really just of money, but in a down market, you can’t just think about miles, you have to think about the quality of your revenue. to increase operational and fuel efficiency. [00:13:00] So he talked in linked to a bunch of different resources in that article. So definitely go check that article out, but about fuel efficiency, making sure you have proper truck specs on your engine, transmission, aerodynamics. Tires and that you maintain those optimal specs with preventive maintenance and annual maintenance controls. A lot has to do with driver behavior too, mostly in controlling speed. So he recommends that you only drive just as fast as you absolutely need to, and that staying at 60, 55 miles an hour is going to really get you the best fuel economy. So if you don’t have to drive any faster than that, then you shouldn’t. And that you should try to calculate, and they linked to a calculator there that I will check out. They suggest that you calculate the amount of time that it’s going to take you and the mileage that it’s going to take you to get from your pickup to your destination, [00:14:00] and calculate the, that mile per hour that you would need to drive to get from point A to point B, and include, consider all of the stops you’re going to need to take and all of the time that it takes. Loading your truck and getting unloaded, because if you have that, then you know that if you’re already that’s already gonna, that number is already at 60 miles an hour. You know that it’s going to actually, you’re actually going to need to drive a lot faster to make that in time. So that’s something interesting to consider when you’re looking at what loads to book.
It’s not just about the rate, it’s also how much is it going to cost you to actually haul that load.
Gurvir: Totally I love the article because I think given, see we can’t really do anything about the economy. The economy is going to act the way it is, given the market, but there’s a lot of things that are in our control. A five cent difference on 10, 000 miles a month is 500 that absolutely goes to your bottom [00:15:00] line.
And I think what I want to show with that is that. Any savings that you get by doing group purchasing, you’re in Virginia and you notice that it’s a five cent cheaper. I’ve seen some people, have an extra tank on the truck so they can fill up at the cheapest gas stations. Taking gas into consideration, diesel into consideration when booking loads, doing, local versus longer loads, but just really holistically knowing the business.
And each few cents per mile makes a huge difference, right? Literally by, by saving five cents extra per gallon, you can make extra 500 a month. So definitely I think driving is huge. I remember we, we tried to govern our trucks at 60 and the drivers had a big pushback.
But if you’re an owner operator, Definitely drive at 60 do not exceed 60. So you’re getting the best mile per gallon I’ve also heard things like ta petro has a better fuel, per gallon like the average that you get per get per mile is better with ta petro again That those are just details and just knowing your business really well And this is what I’ve [00:16:00] heard from other owner operators and even doing some experimentations on on, with our trucks that, Hey, do certain truck stops, give us a different miles per gallon.
And you can do that test like really quickly, just fuel out a TA petro and see what kind of mile per gallon averages you’re getting. But again, I think the notion that I want to tell is like really knowing your business in and out and really knowing your numbers and then just coming up with a strategy I remember I was talking to one of my uncles when he got into trucking.
I told him, Hey, just assume you’re going to always make 8, 000 a month after all expenses, even though he was making 16 K during like 2021. And I think the notion was that you want to reverse engineer these things, right? Hey, what is the minimum amount that you need? Like I know some drivers right now that only need 4, 000 a month to survive and they’re not driving as much.
Because they don’t have a burden to always be on the road. But I also know some owner operators. That need to bring 10, 000 at home to pay for your mortgages and the houses and the cars and everything and I don’t want to get into that discussion of you know being financially disciplined [00:17:00] but I think it’s all reverse engineering just make sure that your costs are really low and then you get a lot of flexibility, right?
You can only drive three to four days a week and not Kill your truck right when the rates are really low Like I have some owner operators that are saying look i’m not gonna drive much this year, right? I’m just gonna do barely minimum And I’m not going to put the miles on my truck and devalue my truck.
I’d rather just drive when the rates improve. But there’s a lot of things that are in our control that we can do. And I think this article shares a lot of those.
Caroline: Yeah, so definitely go check that out. Another one of his recommendations is to try out Power Only. Power Only. Because that can minimize the amount of time that you spend loading and unloading. So that was an interesting tip. I know we talked about that last episode. Someone had a question about power only loads and how to get power only loads. And so it’s an interesting discussion there. I’m interested to see who has experience in power only and whether or not that’s a good thing to get [00:18:00] into when rates are really low.
Gurvir: Yeah. I’m personally not a big fan of power only, but. There’s always loads available on Amazon and other things. I think you can do a hybrid where you do have your own drive and trailer and you can find power only loads. If you’re loaded like getting creative like that. Another idea I would share is look, if you have a partial load and you’re hauling a drive in or, it’s easier on the drive in.
Find another load that you can put in there partial like you’re going from here to florida Maybe there’s a load from richmond to georgia that you can make an extra 600 700 bucks As long as the shipper and the broker allows it right some of these loads are sealed But you can get really creative with these things, you’re putting two loads And you’re going one way and you’re doubling the amount of revenue.
But similarly, I think you can work with power only creatively. Hey, you have a load on your trailer. Let me just find some quick power only load, for Amazon or someone else that I can quickly do while my trailer is loaded and I can’t use that. So I think there’s definitely some ways to creatively do those things.
Caroline: For sure. [00:19:00] The last story that I wanted to draw attention to was the wave of cargo theft. Verisk CargoNet said it documented almost a thousand incidents of cargo theft in the first quarter of this year. That’s a 46 percent increase compared to Q1 of last year and a 10 percent increase from Q4 of 2023. The average stolen shipment value was It’s 280, more than 280, 000. And there was an estimated 154 million worth of goods that were stolen in the first quarter of this year. So this is something that has been increasing, an increasing trend over the last year or so. And Gurveer, I’m wondering if you have heard about this anecdotally from any of your friends and relatives.
What’s their experience with cargo theft?
Gurvir: Yeah, no, I saw a post from a [00:20:00] friend. He was part of a big brokerage at Access America and Coyote and he had a really interesting. Post on LinkedIn about these new types of fraud. I think last year we saw a lot of double broken fraud and the industry has cracked down on it. And the fraudsters are just getting creative, right?
So the fraud that we saw like last year was where the fraudster would just steal an identity of a trucker. And get a load from a broker and then they would just give it to another trucking company pretending to be another broker, right? So they would steal identities twice first as a trucker to get a load and then they would pretend to be a broker and then give that load off and they would run these schemes for months to two months where they were actually not tampering with the product, right?
They were simply just trying to get paid from this customer and this broker and never pay the guy that delivered the load. So that happened a lot last year with tools like Highway and a lot of our carriers and a lot of people out there may be experiencing this when they try to call and book a load, a lot of brokers are denying them.
Because they’re seeing like no [00:21:00] inspection history or certain things that they’re tracking, right? So you might be experiencing this where certain brokers are saying hey, look, I can’t load you and then they don’t reveal the reason and that’s because they’re looking at certain flags but that was what was happening last year.
I think this year they’re getting more creative where again, I was trying to look it up and how these things work, but essentially it’s product theft. Somehow, they’re able to find out and they’re able to book a load, right? I think pretending to be a trucking company, they get the rate confirmation, the pickup number and everything, and they go on to the shipper they pick up the load.
And then you don’t hear about them, right? And the trucking company that they’re showing on the rate card, on all these things, was not the trucking company. So now the product is going missing, right? And they’re able to resell that product elsewhere. And some of these loads are really, expensive.
I remember when there was a load of Viagra that got lost. It was worth millions, right? So even though the cargo insurance is only 100, 000, You can imagine some of these things are pretty interesting like electronics [00:22:00] or Macs or sneakers or who knows what, but yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot about cargo theft
Caroline: Yeah, big spikes have happened in mainly California, Illinois, and Texas, and you’re absolutely right that most of these cases came in the form of pretty complex fraud schemes where the entire truckload was picked up and never delivered or delivered with different paperwork to hide the theft from the customer.
There still is a lot of the more simple cargo theft happening, which, is the whole or partial theft of an unintended loaded trailer.
Most of these cases were those fraud schemes that, that you just described. And the most popular cargo for that theft is small appliances, liquor, energy drinks, and copper. So those are [00:23:00] really heavily targeted and the biggest hotspots for theft are Southern California, Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta, as well as the corridor spanning New York, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania.
This is a huge and not only a warning to carriers out there who are hauling some of this really popular freight to, to steal, also a warning to carriers that you really need to show your legitimacy when you’re out there trying to book loads now.
There’s a higher bar that brokers are going to look for and shippers are going to look for. They really want to see that you are a legitimate business, that you have all of your paperwork, that you’ve had an inspection, that you’ve. Have all your ducks in a row, so to speak. So just really important to try and legitimize your business as early as humanly possible and demonstrate that legitimacy.
Gurvir: Yeah there’s another, I just found the [00:24:00] post and I’m not going to share how this fraud, occurs. I don’t want to give anybody ideas, but maybe we’ll discuss it on some future podcasts. But I would say that definitely make sure that you’re getting because this sorry what I was going to say was that it’s actually a good thing This might be controversial It’s a good thing that everybody’s experiencing fraud because I think that forces the industry to come up with solutions last year it was just cares and factoring companies going through a lot of fraud And when you’re a single entity in an industry other players really don’t care So the good thing is it’s good that everybody’s experiencing this The brokers, the shippers I that the fraud has transitioned into other players because I think it’s going to allow everybody to be let’s wake up and figure this thing out.
And we’ve seen a lot of new tools come up since last year that, that will help resolve these issues. But to your point, if you’re a new carrier, make sure you get an inspection, make sure you really make sure that you legitimize your business because otherwise, a lot of brokers are going to deny freight to you.
Even though you’re a legitimate carrier. So definitely do those things. Definitely get an inspection. You can do a voluntary [00:25:00] inspection. At any scale helps.
Caroline: Yeah, definitely. All right, let’s get into some of these questions. We might only have time for one. So I wanted to go over this comment that I saw from someone on one of the Facebook groups that we follow.
This person says, don’t have much experience in loans. I only had one auto loan back in 2016. I have a two year credit history and a 714 score when I went to the credit union and got approved. Now I’m going to buy a used truck under 60, 000. My credit score is 800 clean for eight years and I have three years of OTR experience. I know rates aren’t the same at all, But I’m seeking some good advice and yes, I know the market conditions. I just want to know if there are any good banks or companies that does financing for trucks with great rates.
I did a little research and I’m seeing even with an excellent credit score, I’m going to need to come up with 15 to 20 percent down and the [00:26:00] interest is going to be eight to 12 percent. I just don’t know if I want to walk into a dealership and have the financing brokers rip me off with high rates. what would you say to someone who has a great credit score.
800 is an awesome credit score. You’re not going to get better than that. You’re not going to get, better. You’re only going to get the best rates. But they’re still seeing 8 to 12 percent on rates, which seems high to this person. So what would you say? What have you seen in the market for buying used trucks lately?
Gurvir: Yeah. So first thing I would recommend that talk to BMO Bank. They’re one of the largest, I think they’re probably the largest lender in the trucking space and this particularly cater to people with high credit scores, right? And you’re probably going to get the, a really good deal. I’m not saying the cheapest deal, you’re probably going to be around the right ballpark with BMO Finance.
Another bank that I would recommend is First National Bank. So I would say go towards banks. Not really those private lenders. That’s where you’re going to see interest rates, over 10%, [00:27:00] 10 to 14%. So banks is where I think you’ll see, you’ll still see seven to. 10%, depending on the down payment that you give another side note, by the way, when banks were giving 0 percent truck loans, that is a disaster because you’re also creating more and more MCs and more and more owner operators.
So this is actually a good thing. The stringent, the requirements to get a loan, that means you have less people entering. That means The rates are going to be good for people that are in the industry, right? So one of the things that has happened over time is whenever, banks and private, lenders have advertised 0 percent trucks, it always leads to more and more people getting trucks, right?
Which means there’s more trucks out there than demand. So just a side note, that has always been a problem. So the stringent. Requirements does mean that less people will come into the market. Could you imagine like a 3 percent loan right now, 4 percent on a truck and you would see like maybe the double amount amount of people coming into the industry and becoming owner operators.
But yeah, I would speak to BMO. You can just [00:28:00] Google BMO Bank. They’re based in Canada, but they also have a a division in the U. S. They’re one of the largest lenders and First National Bank. They’re based in Pennsylvania. I think banks are usually the cheapest.
Caroline: Yeah, definitely. And check out your local credit union as well if you already have one. a good reputation with them and a relationship with them and you’ve gotten business loans from them before, usually a local lender is going to be a good option as well. But those banks are a good option. Two other things that I wanted to mention.
One is that I saw a lot of comments on this post of why are you buying a truck now? Rates are so bad. You shouldn’t do this. This is a bad idea. I say, if you’re already If you’re making this your career and you really want to start a business don’t let other people discourage you from doing that. If you are looking at this as a long term way to build wealth personally, I think that it can be a good move even in a down market. Especially because when there is a down market, you can buy more. And so if you [00:29:00] can buy cheap trucks and you can pay them off sooner and you can stay on the road longer.
Gurvir: A hundred percent. This is the best time to get into the industry because trucks are so much cheaper. My dad the other day found a truck, Kenworth T680, half a million miles for 35, 000. Could you imagine buying a truck 35, 000 compared to the COVID, 100, 000 even you’re getting paid more and now your buy in price and your three year expenses are going to be so low.
Gurvir: And if you can money, if you make money now
Caroline: Then you’re good. You’re golden. I’m not saying that everyone should do it. You shouldn’t do it if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re not doing your numbers. If can’t make a business case for it, then no, of course don’t start a trucking company.
But that’s true in any market, right?
Gurvir: yeah.
Caroline: He is so smart to be shopping around for financing. Instead of being hyper focused on buying that truck, going to the dealership, knowing where you want to buy it, you might not know what kind of truck you want. and getting there and all of a sudden they ask you [00:30:00] how are you going to finance it?
Caroline: And you don’t know, you know what to do so you go to some broker who’s going to charge higher interest rates.
Gurvir: it’s crazy. Caroline, I knew people that were not even paying attention to the interest rate. They were like, the rates are so good. Who cares if I’m paying 14%? This is an awesome thing. This person’s doing their research. They want to know if they’re getting the best price on, on their loans and what’s the right APR to pay.
That means, someone’s actually doing their research before coming into the industry, right? And the people that did not look at those sheets and loan terms I know, some of them that are screwed right now, right?
So no, this is really good. By the way, the, if your overhead is really low.
You have a lot of flexibility. If things don’t work out, get out. You can probably sell a 35, 000 truck for 35, 000 even after 6 months, right? So you don’t have much losses. So low overhead means you have a lot of flexibility. Even if things don’t work out, you will literally minimize your losses, right?
No, I think this is a great time to get into the business if you can.[00:31:00]
Caroline: Cool. All right. That’s it for today. Thanks for joining us for this week in trucking and we’ll see you next time.
Gurvir: Awesome.