Rollin' 18 Podcast

Trucking's Future at a Crossroad: Update on Immigration, Job Stability, and Hurricane Beryl's Threat

• Walter Gatlin • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Curious about the future of the trucking industry and the challenges it faces? Join me, Walter Gatlin, as I read from David Spencer, Vice President of Market Intelligence, to uncover why a full rate recovery might be a distant dream until 2025. We’ll explore the complex topic of immigration, making crucial distinctions between legal and illegal entries, and discuss how this affects our fellow drivers. Plus, we’ll dive into the urgent issue of Hurricane Beryl, which threatens South Texas, and why staying vigilant and safe is more critical than ever.

Keeping your finger on the pulse of the trucking world has never been more essential. This episode of the Rollin' 18 Podcast will equip you with invaluable insights into employment trends, including why you should think twice before switching jobs during these uncertain times. Learn about recent shifts in warehousing jobs, declining long-distance truckload positions, and fluctuations in truck transportation wages. With practical advice on maintaining job stability and financial prudence, this is one episode you won’t want to miss. Stay informed, stay prepared, and stay safe on the road.

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Email me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at rollin18podcast@gmail.com. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Rollin' 18 Podcast. This 40-year veteran is here for anyone wanting to stay up to date with the trucking world. Grab your coffee, hop on board and let's get on down the road with Walter Gatlin.

Speaker 2:

Hello drivers, welcome to Rollin' 18 Podcast. I am your host, walter Gatlin. I appreciate you folks listening to my podcast. Be sure and check out all the links down below in the description. Now, I still haven't found out whether or not you can comment on Buzzsprout, which is my primary podcast server location, so that's something I'm going to have to work on. But we also know that you can comment just about anywhere else on Facebook, instagram places. Wherever Roland A-Team Podcast is, you can comment, but believe you me, I will get you an answer on that.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to bring up illegal immigration for a second. I know I've always said we don't discuss politics and I'm not, but basically I found out some truths today reading some articles and I kind of want to remind everybody that immigration is a normal thing in this country. Illegal immigration is what most people should be screaming about Now. We have a lot of immigrants that come in here legally. They do things the right way. They come in here and they become American citizens through the process. It could take years. I don't know how long it takes actually, but I know they spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to get this done. Even legal immigrants are getting sucker punched in the stomach by the government, by all these illegals coming in and then getting all this money in order to stay in their life, which is something that we have to work hard to do, but they get to do it for free. That's what people are pissed off about. It's not the fact that people are coming over here, and I think the reason I bring this up as a truck driver we get mad at foreigners for being in here driving a truck, not knowing the rules, blah, blah, blah. We've got to be a little more compassionate about this. Okay, and I know we are, but let's open our minds up for a second and realize. You cannot judge every single foreign person driving a vehicle as being an illegal immigrant or somebody that doesn't know how to drive and all this other stuff. Maybe they're not as experienced as we are, or you are, or somebody else is, but maybe they really want to be, maybe they want to do the right thing. Maybe we should judge them after we know the full story about them. That's the whole point. Nobody wants illegal immigration because it's confusing. People come in here, they're released, nobody really knows their background, they don't know who they are. They haven't been tested to see if they're going to assimilate into our nation and make great Americans for the rest of us, because the last thing we want to do is pay for somebody else's lifestyle. We work hard for our money and the government takes too much of it as it is, so we add 30 million more people in the mix and those are 30 more million we have to pay for to survive, in order that they can eat and have a roof over their head, and things like that. Think twice next time before you think about an immigrant and realize there are many stories to many different things. Get the conclusion before you make a statement. Okay, it's that simple. We're smarter than that. We are the largest industry in the world. We need to start acting like it Now.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you drivers have heard or not, but Hurricane Burrell is likely to impact South Texas today and it's in the ports of Brownsville and Corpus Christi Texas area they're saying prepare for the storm's arrival. The story here says the Coast Guard set port condition whiskey for the parts of Brownsville and Corpus Christi, texas, through Monday in anticipation of Hurricane Burl's arrival. Corpus Christi and Brownsville port officials said they are closely monitoring new developments with the storm Under port condition whiskey, ports and other facilities can remain open for commercial operations. But if you're out there and you end up getting a load on Monday and or Tuesday, keep a lookout. Understand yeah, they can give out notices on the phone and stuff it might be too late. The thing of it is, if it gets to the point where they think it's going to be something real savage, like then you need to figure out a way to get the heck out of the area and, regardless of what anybody says, take a hiatus or find a place where you can be safe until the storm goes over. And the main thing is to find out how long that storm is going to last by checking radar to see how fast that storm is moving. So if you guys are going to be in the South Texas area on Monday and Tuesday, be diligent and protect yourself. Make sure you make it home alive.

Speaker 2:

Now there's a writer, john Kingston, and I follow him quite a bit on Freightwaves and he has wrote a story about a minor decline in truck transportation jobs, reported for June. I'm hearing a lot of talk there's going to be a major recession by the end of the year. I'm hoping that's not true, but if that happens, we all need to be ready. Now he writes here. Truck transportation jobs had an uneventful month in June, dropping by the smallest increment that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Changes up or down are reported by the BLS in increments of 100, unless they're zero, and that is the change reported by BLS for June a decline of 100 jobs to 1,548,600 jobs. The BLS also reported downward revisions for May and April. Now the seasonally adjusted figure for May was 1,548,700 jobs, down 1,400 jobs from what was posted a month earlier for May. Now you have to remember one job loss is a lot, because that means somebody lost their job and they're not going to be able to pay their bills. The April figure, which is now final until the big full-year revision in the February report, was down 700 jobs. Now the net result of the latest changes and mostly negative numbers have been racked up in the last two years is that the truck transportation jobs in June were at the lowest level since last October, when they were 1,548,200 jobs. They got as high as 1,556,400 in March before falling back to their current level and I think the current, the new norm, is going to be 1,548,700 jobs. Okay, I think that's going to be the new norm. The low was the 1,548,200. The high was the 1,556,400. I think we're going to be stuck at that 1,548,700.

Speaker 2:

The lack of growth continues to be expected throughout the year and I've been bringing that up, given that spot rates have trended along the floor for most of the year. Now David Spencer, vice President of the Market Intelligence, said in his monthly commentary on the BLS report and you can follow that by typing in monthly commentary on the BLS report. That way you guys can get a sense of what's going on in the trucking industry. Going on in the trucking industry. However, an expected bump in spot rates throughout the summer peak season was likely. What contributed to stable employment in June. So we can't expect more layoffs. We can't expect irregular loads. We can't expect things to get busy and then slow and then busy and slow. Pocket some of your money, don't spend lavishly. Do what you got to do to make sure all your bills are paid and then spread out your dollars thin, because I don't know what's going to happen this year.

Speaker 2:

Stability is the best the industry can hope for now, according to Spencer. He says we are encouraged by the relative year-over-year in growth this summer peak season, but still feel the indicators point to a full rate recovery in 2025 at the earliest, he said. As such, we think stability in employment levels is the best case scenario in the short term. I don't know how we're going to become stable in 2025 when things right now are looking towards a full recession by the end of this year or, you know, towards the end of this year. But this is what they're reading with the numbers and I think the numbers are lying a little bit. So you guys, be careful out there. Try real hard to keep money stashed away, do what you can to invest in things that are not high risk and do your best to not buy a bunch of expensive stuff. That's about all we can do.

Speaker 2:

He says one sign that the steady decline in jobs may have bottomed came in the not seasonally adjusted figures. While economists look to the seasonally adjusted numbers as key, others caution that the not seasonably adjusted figures should not be ignored. They are the basis for a seasoned adjustment factor that then produces the seasonally adjusted figure. Now they're using the word seasonally so many times. I'm getting tired of reading it, but truck transportation jobs climbed to 1,559,400 in June and it puts the figure well above February low of 527. It also marks the second straight month of a sharp increase in not seasonally adjusted jobs. So what is the main story here? The main story here is the warehousing and storage jobs. Okay, they've reached their bottom plateau. They're starting to climb back up a little bit. And what does that tell us? That tells us that things are starting to stabilize and normalize and that is a very good sign for 2025.

Speaker 2:

So if you guys are out there, you have a great job and you're doing well, but you're bored, but you're thinking about quitting, maybe switching jobs because you're, eh, just want to try something new, you may be jumping out of the pan into the fire. Remember that A lot of companies may be having problems right now that you're unaware of and they're like oh yeah, come on board. You get on board and all of a sudden, boom, they close the doors or they cut half their staff. That's not what you want. If you are at a stable company and you know the entrance of that company, you hear what's going on. Oh, we're doing fine. You know, because normally when you work for a company, you can hear what's going on with the company and you can also produce what's going on with the company because you're actually doing the work and you know that, okay, we're staying steady, we're moving steady. If that's the case, stay where you're at.

Speaker 2:

I don't recommend anybody unless they know for a fact change a job if they're at a stable position until this weave and wave goes away. You know, we either drop into a recession by the end of the year or we get close, but we never make it there and then we start to climb out in 2025. Do your best to take care of your job. Do your best to take care of yourself. Give it six months. See what happens. If, after Christmas, everything seems normal and you want to get a different position with it or a different driving job with a different company, go for it. But until then, I would hold off. If you have a steady job, hold off and do your best not to change positions.

Speaker 2:

Now, another thing is the subcategory of long-distance truckload drivers. And if you don't know what that means, look up subcategory of long-distance truckload drivers and they report on a month lag, or a one-month lag, and it fell to 539,000 jobs in May from 541,900. You see what I'm saying and and it early in the month is when that was reported it's down almost 10 000 jobs in the last year, so I don't know where this fluctuation is going to go. And also from uh bls report on employment, the not seasonably adjusted average hourly wage for truck transportation workers, who are considered production and non-supervisory, cracked $30 per hour for the first time ever, coming in right at that number. The figure for all employees, after setting an all-time high in April of $31.32 an hour, dropped to $31.29 an hour.

Speaker 2:

These pennies are. You know you're going to be well, those are just pennies. No, when you're talking, you know 320 million people you're talking. There's a lot of money at stake here and every single fluctuation in the industry makes a huge difference. That's why I tell drivers all the time keep your ears open when you're at the terminal, listen to what they got to say, see what's happening, see if all the offices are still, you know, occupied with employees. See if any offices are empty.

Speaker 2:

You know you go down the road and let's say, you work local. My brother works local. Now he got off the big road, he's working local. Now Are there a lot of places not shipping out as much as they used to? Are you being dispatched home earlier? Are you not working 12 hour days, but working 10 hour days. All that stuff makes a huge, significant difference because it tells you where the market is going. But, all in, I want to let you drivers know please do your due diligence to make sure that you keep some money in your pocket.

Speaker 2:

Try not to spend as much. I understand that cost of living has gone way up and we're hoping that things will change here soon and things will start going back down and I think they will next year but right now we're going to hit a rough spot between July and the end of the year and we need to take care of each other, and the best way to do that is to communicate and let each other know. Cut down on the spending. Relax with your job. I know it may be redundant or you hate the people you work with, but at least you're still bringing home a paycheck.

Speaker 2:

There are thousands and thousands of people out there who've lost their job and trucking already this year. I don't want you to have to suffer the same fate. So take it easy, relax. Try not to spend the company into oblivion. If you have a situation where you can do things like that to a company, try not to wash the truck as much. All this little stuff helps out a company and I'm not bragging about the companies, but we are a team.

Speaker 2:

're the driver, they're the company. Everything you do to save them money saves them from having to get rid of somebody else. Could be your buddy, could be a friend, could be a relative, could be you. You know, nobody wants to hit the highway without a job, especially this day and age. The housing market's starting to take a weird turn. Everything's starting to get suspicious and a little dangerous. So try your best to do your best to take care of what you've got. Relax, keep your mouth zipped. Hopefully next year will bring us new tidings. I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast and I am here on Monday, wednesday and Fridays just to provide you guys with information about trucking. So you guys have a great day. God bless, be safe and, as always, keep it between the lines. Driver.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to Roland 18 Podcast. Please visit my website at mediaiowacom or the podcast page at Rollin18podcastcom.