Freight News, profits & losses in the Transport Industry

So, what's it to be then?

Are we all looking at an upturn, a downturn or the status quo? Depending on how you interpret the news coming over the last few days from Panalpina, United Airways et al, you can be talking up your interpretation of the figures, cutting your throat or looking at the sky whistling Dixie.

I troubled to read various statements from some in our cosy transport and logistics world this week to see if I could make any sense. You can stop reading now if you like. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion. Nobody seems to share it with anyone else.

Broadly though I get the feeling that, six months or so ago, the freight world was squatting in the pit watching the pendulum blade swishing ever closer and waiting for that first nick predicting imminent pain and disaster.

Now it seems, although you may still be crouching with your eyes closed, the steady hiss of the blade whistling close overhead, you're getting, well, rather complacent.

Yes, there has been pain, redundancies, closures, however there is also a sense that, well, life, and commerce, go on regardless. Stocks are run down to the point where they must be replenished, that's trade for our industry. Mergers and acquisitions have occurred making organisations fitter and leaner, more able to cope with the pressures.

We've held out against the banks to the point they're whinging we don't take up their loans and up their profits. OK. United's profits are down for the month 17% on last year, but overall they're up for recent times and their biggest fear for August is the effect the bloke with the busted guitar might have on sales. In fact I heard their stock rose after the video came out.

As it happens it's worth another look.

Anyway, meanwhile the world economy will do what it always does: make some rich and others poor. It is simply too  big for any one person to comprehend all of it, but small enough to allow a lot of people to become rich by telling us that, actually, they do.

I see Goldman Sachs now rely more upon algorithms than dealers on the stock floors to make their money. More reliable apparently, no surprise there, oiks in red braces who don't turn up for work if it means 3 days straight losing the Banks money (and therefore oiks employment), doesn't have abandoned puppy's eyes appeal for most of us. Let's face it, the best way to beat the casino is a computer in your shoe so why not let it invest what dopey has left you in your pension fund.

So overall, I reckon it's best to take the middle road. Hope for the best, keep your heads under that swinging scythe and get on with it.Go on. Make something happen. The bloke with the busted guitar did.

Comments

[Wotchit321]

Wotchit321 says: Seen it all before. 7 years good, 7 years bad, as the good book says. These things are always cyclical. Thats why old 'Buster' Browns statement a few years ago about ending boom-and-bust was so bloody stupid.

[Captain P]

No,No I fear the monocular Scotsman may have it right.
It was booming and he may have ended it by busting it permanently.

[Wotchit321]

Bah... All this doom and gloom. It's bad, fair enough, but it ain't all that. The telegraph had a thing about this recession being as bad in some ways as 1930. KAK!!! Are people living by the thousands in the street? No. Are people starving? No. What a load of tosh. The bloody press ought to keep some perspective and not go sensationalist for the sake of it.