This just made me realize that things are back in stock regularly again. I suppose it happened slowly so I didn't notice, but shortages seem to be totally gone and things are back to 2019 stock levels.

The shelves may have stuff one them, but there's like 4 bags of each of 6 brands, instead of 24 brands.

Not everything, cars still have super long wait times if you buy new

Especially hybrid or PHEV

I think Flock Freight will be the next shutdown. Rough industry.

Took an interview with them last year. Glad I didn't proceed.

> consumer spending has shrunk to less than 50% of what it used to be

and you're in a position to be concerned with the accuracy of your numbers, i assume.

CNN Tuesday: "US retail sales rose in September for the sixth-straight month"

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/economy/retail-sales-septembe...

... id be interested in your thoughts on the apparent conflict of viewpoint there.

These seem consistent with each other:

During the pandemic and boom consumer spending was at X ("what it used to be")

Then it dropped a ton, though in recent months it's been increasing month over month. In fact, it's all the way back up to 50% of what it used to be!

Like the sibling comment has said.

But what we saw during the peak was crazy, and some investors and execs thought it would last.

At least in regards to what pertains FTL freight, we saw a drop of tougjly 50% in volumes as consumer spending is down when compared to pandemic height. I am pretry sure there will be a seasonal trend upwards, but no where in the way it was before.

If you are in the industry, you can easily check how much cargo is moving around. Maybe by November-December it will be less than a 50% drop, but expect it to return by kid January-February.

> consumer spending has shrunk

Part of the reason being that workers have been ordered back to offices, meaning a significant portion of their income is spent on commute and eating out. Crazy how damaging rto is to everything around us.

Most of the reason is that asset prices (and thus wealth has shrunk), inflation is higher, so people are buying less and there's no Fed dropping money from helicopters.

Indeed, but add travel expenses and the cost of living in crowded cities and eating expensive food and you’ve got a cashflow crisis. Remote work is the single biggest economic boost the economy can get without the government printing money. Not to mention higher productivity.

It's weird since prices haven't really changed for customers. I thought freight going down by 70% would have an impact on pricing but I guess it was a smaller part of the total price than I originally would've believed?