I don’t have a clear vision of the future. I can tell you a little bit about the past. And it goes in cycles of five to seven years where companies get to a point where they’re frustrated with the shipping environment and they buy their own trucks. And then sometimes it’s permanent like Home Depot, or Pepsi, or Reynolds, or Walmart or whomever.
And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes they realize that they have to hire fleet managers. They have to hire equipment managers. They have to learn about trucks. They have to learn about trailers. They have to hire logistics folks and dispatchers, and then somebody somewhere five to seven years down the road sees this cost center right in there.
And the CFO says, “Why are we spending $8 million on this? Can’t we outsource that? Don’t people do that better than we do?” And so it goes. And so actually over the many years I’ve been in the industry, it’s been about 50-50 (ratio). I mean, it goes 60-40, and then 50-50, and then 60-40 the other way. And then it swings and it kinda swings based on fuel crises or driver shortages or supply chain issues.
We’ll probably push some over. And then maybe 5, 6, 7 years down the road, things might be better and they might decide they don’t want to mess with trucking anymore.
