Load availability has been increasing steadily on the spot market, driving the average load-to-truck ratio over 7-to-1. Flatbed freight surged for the first four months of the year, increasing by more than 1,000 percent compared to 2009, before declining by 15% in May compared to April. The ratio for flatbeds stayed above 32 loads per available ...

Freight rates rose in March on the spot market for all equipment types, according to TransCore’s Truckload Rate Index. The product, which provides contract-based rates from actual freight bills, will soon include a module that tracks rates paid by brokers to truckers. These “spot market” rates are typically more responsive to market demand than ...

Freight availability tripled in the first quarter of 2010, compared to the same time period in 2009, on the North American spot market, according to the TransCore North American Freight Index. Spot market freight volume has been improving steadily since October, on a year-over-year basis, and load availability has been unseasonably high since ...

Freight availability in January rose by 54% on the North American spot market, compared to January 2009, according to the TransCore Freight Index. Freight volume has been improving since October, on a year-over-year basis, due both to the improving trend in the second half of 2009 as well as the market weakness that extended from Q4 2008 through ...

Customizable screens and dashboards are among the new features in all of TransCore’s Tracking & Communications products. The application’s interface – the part that dispatchers see --- has been re-designed to make it more intuitive. The newly redesigned software features maps of your entire fleet, with detailed, real-time information on each ...

Brad Aitken, director of business development for TransCore’s Tracking and Communications (GlobalWave) business unit, has been elected to the Board of Governors for the National Private Truck Council (NPTC) Institute. The NPTC represents private truck fleets and provides training and certification programs to advance the professional skill and ...

This article is adapted, with the author’s permission, from an investment brief titled “Running on Fumes: Number of Trucking Failures Drops Dramatically.” The brief was published by Avondale Partners for information purposes on January 9, 2009. Truck company failures removed 7% of the nation’s truckload capacity in 2008, but demand declined in ...

The transportation industry was shaken in mid-September by the credit freeze and accompanying financial uncertainty, but it adjusted quickly to the new environment. A glance at TransCore’s customer credit records for the months of August, September and October revealed a distinct pattern. Credit scores declined, and days-to-pay spiked. (See ...

For the first few years of operation, each of the two dispatchers at Joe Tex Xpress called 25 drivers every morning to locate the fleet’s 50 trucks. Even when every driver answered his cell phone immediately, the check calls would take more than an hour for each dispatcher. “A driver might be on the road or in a situation where he couldn’t ...

We’ve all heard plenty of bad news lately. Declining freight volumes. Trucking company failures. Layoffs. Well, here’s a surprise: Some carriers are doing just fine. In fact, they’re optimistic about the future. These are not just giant carriers, either. Small and mid-size truck lines are also profitable, even in this tough economy. If you’re ...