Aaron Graft
Analyst · your question.
Yes. It would seem so, Steve. And there's been a lot written about this. And a lot of people – I feel like Triumph knows transportation perhaps better than any bank in the United States, but there are people who live transportation every day, who are in it, who are probably more informed than us. But I will tell you that there are some reasons that it will be difficult to re-seat drivers. I mean, part of this – the other – there's clearing house that drivers have to – they have to pass – like I think there were 30,000 drivers – applicants, for example, who failed the clearing house, whether it's related to drugs, convictions, otherwise. Those people are going to be out of the market. They can't come back and reapply for three years. So as that has gotten tighter, it's just that you have less qualified people to put in these trucks. And there's just the freight market, if anything we've seen in coming out of the crisis – if that's the right word for it, but the slowdown in Q2, the frozen market we were in where nobody knew which direction we were going is that the freight market struggles to respond to the volatility of where things are going and how quickly the market turned around. The freight market is just not that responsive. And how long does it take? I mean, not sure, eventually, economics tells you that invoice prices stay where they are right now, you're going to pull new entrants into the market. And I think in the third quarter, for example, there were 31,000-ish new power units ordered. Well – it takes – or that was the rate. There's 20,000 of those would just be replacements. So if that number continues to go up, and that tells you people are finding drivers – and ultimately, we don't expect invoice sizes to stay where they are right now. I mean they might well do it for Q4. But eventually, yes, they will come down. But you got to remember, all these contracts are being renegotiated right now between shippers and brokers. And so there is an upward pressure as everything is being renegotiated, and it sets up nicely for next year. I mean obviously, we can't predict the future. But the last thing I'd leave you with is even in a sideways or downward trending freight market, what we do in transportation is far more profitable than anything else we do in the bank. So we're always going to look to grow smart and safe in our transportation lines of business. And when times are great like they are now, that's fantastic. But even when times are tougher, it's still very, very profitable for us, and that's why we're focused there.