Jose Williams spent decades leased in the network of United Van Lines before going out on his own as Lyons Gate Group more than five years ago. Still running one truck, Williams has learned a lot in those years, including a tough lesson in partner loyalty brought about by COVID-19.
Pre-pandemic, Williams’ 2007 Caterpillar-powered Kenworth specialized in trade shows and other high-value blanket-wrap-type freight. Some was pulled under direct contracts, others via specialized brokers.
When the pandemic hit early this year, many of his regular customers and brokers saw business dry up or at best get hit hard. The Yorktown Heights, New York, native made moves to keep busy working load boards and attempting to use connections outside his principal specialty.
One of those connections was to a large broker he’d worked with and even fed freight to when he couldn’t cover a customer’s load. As business in general freight has picked back up since the beginning of the summer, salesmen from that particular broker have been calling, Williams said.
What he’s told several of them, after the experience of the disastrous second quarter: “When the crunch came down, you weren’t offering me anything worthy of the work I’ve done for you, the excellent service. You’re trying to stick me with $1 this and 80 cents a mile that.”
A far cry from any sense of appreciation he might have expected. As he told them: “That’s not loyalty, that’s not partnership — that’s every man for himself when the time comes for it, and I don’t appreciate that.”
Owner-operators, carriers and their customer brokers and shippers will be reckoning with decisions made during that crunch for years, even as memories of bitter experiences such as Williams’ fade. Wild swings in supply and demand as a result of COVID’s shifting of freight patterns and the population’s drastically altered buying habits have resulted in record spot market rates this fall. Barring unforeseen necessity of another, unlikely widespread lockdown, the favorable environment for carriers might be expected to continue through much of the winter.
