Hey! We’d love to talk to you about your project.

BLOG: A Quickly Changing Landscape

May 21, 2020

Across the country, factories have begun to open back up sending thousands of employees back to work. From partitions between line workers and taped off areas on the floor, manufactures are taking extra precautions throughout their facilities where workers would normally be very close to one another.

 

The largest industry opening its doors over the past week is auto manufacturers. According to Transport Topics, “more than 130,000 autoworkers returned to factories across the U.S for the first time in nearly two months in one of the biggest steps yet to restart American industry…” General Motors, Ford, Honda, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler all welcomed employees back in locations across Tennessee, Michigan, Texas, California and more. Plants are focused on restarting and implementing new practices to keep employees safe and healthy while working – not so much building cars as it will take time for these massive facilities to be back up and running.

 

Between factories reopening and a promising COVID-19 vaccine entering the testing phase, freight markets throughout the country are seeing the landscape start to quickly change. According to Freightwaves CEO Craig Fuller, “We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the OTVI (outbound tender volumes) this week, growing at the fastest pace since mid-March.” He continued to write via LinkedIn, “Auto represents an estimated 7% of the truckload van market and with plants and suppliers resuming activity, we should see continued volume increases to take us into June.”

 

With outbound tender volume index on the rise and produce season right around the corner, industry leaders are preparing for a swift change throughout the country, where pricing lows of the last few months are expected to shift. To combat this, Consultants at Axle Logistics encourage its clients and carriers’ partners to continue to implement best practices while leveraging partnerships throughout Axle’s network as well as their own.