Editorial: An Interesting New Year

This Editorial appears in the Jan. 5 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Having passed through one of the toughest, most volatile economic years that trucking has experienced could make one antsy about the future. We may look ahead with deep trepidation, or we can greet the journey as a thrilling adventure.

Whichever emotion the arrival of 2009 may stir, one should be confident that our “interesting times” are likely to get more interesting — if only because so much is at stake.

The arrival of the new year was greeted with more grim reports on freight volumes, our industry’s lifeblood. Little in the news gave signs that worldwide financial turmoil would soon ease — access to credit was still problematic, and the background noise about growing unemployment grew louder.

When one’s very survival comes with more questions than answers, the adventure is probably turning a bit dicey.

At this point, no one needs an economic guru to point out that this recession — “officially,” we’re now told, under way since the previous new year — is deep. What so many are asking for is a reason to believe that the road will take us back into sunlit uplands.

Expect many twists and turns along the way.

The incoming Obama administration is crafting additional, multibillion-dollar stimulus plans. (One is reminded that during the Great Depression, the new Roosevelt presidency threw everything it could think of into a recovery stew.)

Among the good things that could come out of this kind of intervention should be a revitalization of the national highway system. On the other hand, whether the hand of government can clear the financial jungle, put credit back on a sound foundation and give consumers a reassuring pat on the pocketbook remains to be seen.

One suspects that recovery this time will be neither smooth nor graceful. Even so, there are reasons for optimism.

For one, the feverish rise in the price of oil appears to have been broken. Economic forecasting firm IHS Global Insight said it expects prices for all commodities to remain at “depressed” levels in 2009.

Besides giving a boost to consumer spending, that trend could bring down the cost of steel, rubber and plastics and lessen the rate of increase in the cost of trucking equipment.

And as bad as everything seems, trucking economist Noel Perry recalled that the industry has been through worse times.

“This downturn is the kind we used to have fairly frequently in the 1970s,” he said. “Most companies can adjust . . . and will survive.”

We can only hope that he is right.