The spot market slide: Mid-year owner-op numbers illustrate a turn back to leasing, much more

With some of the signs flashing red, as it were, on the prospects of bona fide economic recession, the indicators remained mixed for owner-operator business performance as of a couple weeks ago, the time of ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted's year benchmarking presentation Overdrive originally reported on at this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business/article/15296973/ownerop-revenue-up-big-this-year-but-completely-offset-by-fuel

Hosted will be familiar to regular readers from his earlier-year presentation with Overdrive and our own Gary Buchs at the Mid-America Trucking Show, part of our Partners in Business program: http://overdriveonline.com/partners-in-business

This edition of Overdrive Radio dives in with Hosted for the bulk of his recent distillation of what ATBS has seen throughout year since. Listeners can glean plenty from this audio-only version, but know that a video version is available that includes most of the charts and graphs illustrating year-over-year comparisons of average revenue, costs and bedrock income that Hosted shared throughout. Find it via this link to Overdrive's Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Tl6AzI8aJo4

Hosted's insights include plenty in the way broader economic and freight trends data. As rates on the spot markets for freight have continued to slide, ATBS, he said, is starting to see a shift for many owners who went out and got authority during the last couple of spot market boom years -- a move back to leasing as a refuge from declining rates and rising costs.

Thanks to our friends at Overdrive sister publication CCJ, we can quantify that anecdotal trend to an extent.

Every year, CCJ compiles the Top 250, ranking the most sizable freight carrying trucking fleets in the nation. The rankings are the result in part of surveying those carriers directly, with the survey running typically in the June and July months of the year. This year, 97 out of the top 250 carriers reported numbers of leased-on independent contractors among operators working with them. Comparing that group for this year to what was reported in 2021, there’s been a rise in leased-on independents -- in spite of political and regulatory pressures like California's AB 5 contractor making some carriers skittish about leasing, particularly out West.

It's not a big number -- yet. Considered in the aggregate, those 97 major fleets were contracting with 2% more independents in 2022, at the height of the fuel-price shock in those early summer months, than in 2021. Whatever your situation, there's plenty to glean in this week's episode, as Hosted compares the performance of leased dry van, reefer and flatbed owners, likewise independents with motor carrier authority, among ATBS clientele.