[Excerpt from The Pickett Line April 2024 Issue] “How did you go bankrupt?”, Bill Gorton asks Mike Campbell on page 136 of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’. “Two ways,” Mike answers. “Gradually and then suddenly”. In Mike’s case, it was brought on by acquiring a collection of “false friends” and “probably more …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line March 2024 Issue] Tick tock…tick tock…tick tock. No, not that TikTok. That’s the sound of the supply side of the US truckload market that, much like a Timex watch as popularized by an advertising campaign launched in 1956 with former NBC news anchor John Cameron Swayze, “takes a licking and …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line February 2024 Issue] Well, we did it. We made it through another freight month Ladies and Gentlemen. And what a month it was. If you had to pick the dullest, least interesting month of the freight year, February is usually at the top of the list. The post-peak season holiday …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line January 2024 Issue] Happy (belated) New Year and Welcome to Season 4 of The Pickett Line. With January now in the rearview mirror, 2024 is officially off and running. And as is often the case, the immediate path forward for the US trucking market remains shrouded in the fog of …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line December 2023 Issue] And that’s a wrap folks. 2023 is officially in the rearview mirror and what a long, strange trip it’s been (hat tip to the Grateful Dead). We came into the year with a head of steam in search of the deflationary inflection point of the current rate …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line November 2023 Issue] As we closed last month’s issue humming bars of ‘Tomorrow’ from the 1977 Broadway musical Annie, we were reminded that despite how grim the economy and the US TL spot and contract markets still looked and felt at the time, the proverbial sun would indeed come out …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line October 2023 Issue] Well, it was fun while it lasted. But with the viral blitz of national interest behind Picket(t) Lines and organized labor actions behind us for the most part, it’s back to basics this month at Pickett Research. And if recent progress in negotiations between the UAW and …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line September 2023 Issue] It’s been a crazy week here for the team at Pickett Research, which is saying something given the inherent crazy-ness of the US Truckload Spot Market – our primary focus of study and the subject of our unwavering and arguably unhealthy obsession. We published our inaugural issue …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line August 2023 Issue] Well, it’s official. The heat was on last month in a big way – so big in fact that NASA has indeed confirmed July as the warmest month on earth, at least within the 143-year historical record. And we haven’t gotten much of a reprieve this month …
[Excerpt from The Pickett Line July 2023 Issue] Well, here we are Ladies and Gentlemen. We’ve made the turn – on both the calendar and the truckload market cycle – and are now well into the back half of what has been a painfully grinding 2023 for most folks that operate on the supply side …