“The question on every trucking carrier and freight broker’s mind: “is this surge just normal seasonality, or something more?”

Answering that question is difficult because of the number of unknown variables in the marketplace and how they interact.  It’s impossible to get a precise measure of absolute capacity: the existing data speaks indirectly to overall trends rather than acutal truck counts.  And the short-term outlook for the U.S. economy is highly uncertain as well.  

When both supply and demand diverge meaningfully from ‘normal’ historical patterns, forecasting the third part of the equation, rates, can only be done with a fairly low degree of confidence.”