TUCSON, Ariz. — Executives with two of the nation’s largest motor carriers said freight demand has jumped so fast in recent months that some sectors are having difficulty finding trucks to transport their goods.

“About mid-February it was almost like someone flipped a switch and things started popping, capacity was getting tighter,” Steve Elliott, vice president of brokerage operations for Schneider Transportation Management, said here April 8 during the Transportation Intermediaries Association’s annual conference.

Elliott, whose company is a division of truckload carrier Schneider National Inc., said that following a solid March, demand in April has remained “pretty strong as well.”

“I’ve told shippers, ‘Rates are going up, guys, and they’re going up quickly,’ ” Elliott said.

Craig Littzen, vice president of solutions and intermodal network at Swift Transportation, Phoenix, Ariz., shared Elliott’s feelings.

“We’ve seen a significant recovery in the short term,” Littzen said. “Over the last 90 days we’ve been very pleased. When we look at recovery, we see recovery both in price and in other aspects of capacity utilization.”

Source: This story appears in the April 19 print edition of Transport Topics. By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter Transport Topics Print Edition April 19, 2010

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