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[Excerpt from The Pickett Line December 2024 Issue] And we’re off. After an unusually inflationary January where spot market rates shrugged off typical seasonality and ran materially hotter than December, we’re now into the first week of February where conditions have since cooled in line with the season. And given we really don’t know how […]

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line November 2024 Issue] Happy New Year 2025! After suffering through the 3rd year of the deflationary leg of the last US TL Spot Linehaul Rate Cycle and, after last month’s issue, the 3rd annual corny ‘Twas the night before Christmas…’-inspired holiday freight market poem from the literary elves at Pickett

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line October 2024 Issue] Well, we’ve got some bad news and some good news this month. And we’re not talking about the US truckload freight market or the broader economy – at least not yet. The bad news is, as many of you are no doubt aware as you stew in

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line September 2024 Issue] Well, we made it through another month of a US truckload freight market that continues for the most part to bend without breaking. After last month’s August issue characterized current market conditions as ‘Stuck in Neutral’, we have since been forced to contend with a barrage of

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line August 2024 Issue] With Q3 now just about baked, it looks like we’ll hang on to our first Y/Y inflationary print on the US TL Spot Linehaul Index in nine long quarters – if only by a thread. After breaking on through (to the other side) in the June issue

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line July 2024 Issue] After breaking on through (to the other side) last month with our first Y/Y inflationary print on the US TL Spot Linehaul Index in nine long quarters at +3.0%, over the balance of July and now into August the market appeared to signal “not so fast!” We

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line June 2024 Issue] Over the years, the staff at Pickett Research has taken literary inspiration from a wide range of artists, scientists, and other iconic figures to describe the dynamics in play within the US Truckload freight market: from The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty to Santa Claus to Chris

[Excerpt from The Pickett Line May 2024 Issue] When the very first issue of The Pickett Line rolled off the press back in December 2020, it began with the following passage (you know how we love our quotes and literary references over here): “To quote Sir John Templeton, “The four most dangerous words in investing

[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