Weekly Driver Recruiting Report – November 30, 2022

The Weekly Report brings you updated data on recruiting metrics including click, search, and spot rates, plus a new story of the week. This week’s story – a national rail strike is once again looming as Christmas approaches.

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Numbers at a Glance

November 30, 2022 Driver Recruiting Insights

Weekly Report Transcript – November 30, 2022

Hello everyone and welcome to the Weekly Report. For Randall Reilly, I’m Joshua Miller. It’s great to have you back with us, and I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and were able to take at least a little time off. But now we’re back to the grind. I’ve got all the updated numbers and we’ll let you know how things went during the holiday week in just a moment, but first a quick update.

We’ll have three more Weekly Reports for you this year including this one. We’ll have two more reports on the first two Wednesdays in December and then our team here will be taking some time down, so you won’t hear from us over here at the report until 2023 after the December 14^th edition of our show. But things will be a little different when we come back in January.

We’re going to be shifting to a monthly format with our show. We’ll still cover some of the same metrics and hit a news story for you, but we’re also going to feature some new data and we’re hoping to have our good friend Jason Miller from Michigan State University, join us to shed a little light on the supply chain and overall economy as well.

We’re still ironing out the kinks and trying to finalize the formatting but suffice it to say it will be at least a little different from our Weekly Reports, while still trying to maintain the focus on the data and figures that are important to you. I’ll try to keep you posted with any new developments, but that’s it for now. We’ll finish out the year with our normal reports and then shift gears when we hit January.

Now on to this week’s report.

THIS WEEK IN JOB BOARD SEARCHES AND CLICKS

Get ready for a lot of red in this post-Thanksgiving report. Searches were down across the board with declines of 14% WoW, 21% MoM, and 29% YoY. Clicks too were down as they fell by 25% WoW, 21% MoM, and 19% YoY.

THIS WEEK IN FREIGHT

The trend continues as load volume fell by 45% WoW and each of the three segments saw declines. This 45% drop comes in 49% below the same week of 2021 and is 25% lower than the five-year average. With that being said, declines were relatively uniform across the country as the drops were due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Dry van load volume fell by 41%, refrigerated by 43%, and flatbed plunged by 52% WoW. Truck availability also took a hit with a 26% decline as the ratio of loads-to-trucks hit its lowest level since May of 2020. Interestingly, although the loads-to-trucks ratio is lower than typical since the pandemic lockdowns began, the number still comes in slightly higher than the average weekly Market Demand Index in 2019.

Overall spot rates dipped by 2¢ per mile WoW. Dry van rates are the lone green number this week as they increased by 7¢ per mile WoW. Refrigerated rates were down 5¢ and flatbed decreased by 1¢ per mile WoW.

STORY OF THE WEEK

The railroad strike we thought we avoided could be back on! This past September we all breathed a sigh of relief as we avoided a massive railroad strike … or so we thought. In reality, it appears we just kicked the can down the road. Talks were extended at the time and with help from Washington all parties involved were hopeful that an acceptable deal could and would be reached. However, after a narrow vote turned down the latest proposal, a strike could be back on the table – just in time for Christmas.

SMART Transportation Division, which happens to be the nation’s largest rail union, represents 28,000 conductors. Well, wouldn’t you know it, they rejected the deal, which was at least in part brokered by the White House. The final vote saw record turnout, and, in the end, the proposal failed by the slimmest of margins with 50.8% voting NO.

The second largest rail union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, voted in favor of the deal. The conductors’ union and engineers’ union together make up around half of the unionized labor force, but the total of 12 unions involved adhere to what’s called a “me too” policy. Under these conditions, the terms agreed to by the last holdout would then trickle down and apply to the rest of the unions involved. If all 12 of the unions fail to reach an agreement, we could be in for a strike.

The last railroad strike was in 1991 and lasted all the way up until a day before Congress was to get involved. The following year, a walkout by members of the International Association of Machinists spread nationally and lasted for two days before Congress intervened.

Unless an agreement is reached or Congress once again steps in, SMART Transportation Division could strike, or the rail carriers could lock out workers on December 9^th.

Losses due to a rail strike are estimated to potentially reach over $2 Billion a day. In addition to that, the ATA estimates the U.S. would need an additional 460,000 long-haul trucks on the road every day to offset the loss of the 7,000 daily freight trains, which is … simply NOT possible. We’ll keep you updated as the story unfolds.

That’s it for this week’s report. We hope the information has been useful and informative to you. As always you can download a PDF covering everything we went over today – that’s available in the description on YouTube and in the main body of the page on our Randall Reilly site. Come on back and see us next week as we take another look back to help you move forward. Until then, have a great week everybody.