10-22-25 America's Truckin' Network

Central Caribbean Sea. Hurricane watch issued for portions of Haiti. Now, the tracking of this storm looks like it's going to go a little bit across Haiti, but take a northernly almost like at this point, like a northwesterly attack, which if it goes across Cuba, could possibly hit the tip

of Florida later on. But so far, and I hate saying this because you know, I don't want to tempt fade or anything, but the hurricane season begins June first and goes until the end of November, and we have yet to have a name storm or a hurricane have a direct hit on the United States they had predicted. And of course, all these people talking about climate change and the world's going to hell in a handbasket because you know, the Earth is heating up and all this

sort of stuff, which is a load of crap. We've talked about that on this program, but they were predicting three or four or five storms that possibly hit the United States, and so far none have hit.

originate from in the first place. I want to talk about economic news a little bit, but I also want to get into some of the stuff going on in the trucking industry.

But we'll talk about that tomorrow because there's a lot of stuff going on and what I'm seeing, I'm going to just say overall, it seems what is coming into focus now is that with the tariffs that have been issued and then pulled back, and of course if you listen to the spoon federc urgitators in the mainstream media,

it's that what was it the was it taco? At the beginning of the year, Trump always chickens out, which was a bunch of crap because basically in a negotiating situation and with the way Donald Trump reacts and all the people around him talk about how he absorbs everything, even.

manufacturing over here. So it's kind of like competing. I made the discussion, or I made the point about here in the Greater Cincinnai Northern Kentucky area, there's this constant battle with Cincinnati on one side of the river and Kentucky on the other side of the river, always trying to poach different businesses from each.

got going on between Canada. But it was a contentious meeting that they had in April, and then later on what was a week or so ago, came back to the White House and they were like the best of friends. They were joking about, they were having a great time. There was a little chungu in cheek something, you know,

said they were talking about the trade negotiations. He goes, well, you know there's Trump says, you know, there is one way that we can solve that real easy, and that Prime minister kind of like put.

that it was a negotiating tool. I mean, he had the different documents there and talked about how, okay, this particular country has these tariffs on our goods coming into their country versus the terraffs that we have, and what we're going to do is do reciprocal terraffts until they know we negotiate new terms and they bring their terrafts down and we get more on a fair playing field, on a fair trade field as opposed to a free

trade situation. And most of these deals have been worked out, and it's starting to become clear as to where these tariffs are going to hit and where it's if it's going to hurt a particular business or a particular industry. Trump has been very good at looking at that and saying, well, okay, we'll do an exemption here, we'll do an exemption for this, and we'll do an exemption for that. We're seeing that

in the car industry. We're seeing that some of the heavy trucks that we've been talking about the import of trucks, because we do have trucks manufactured in the United States, but we do import Volvo and Mercedes Benz type vehicles into the United States, and so there's this trade off between the domestic trucks and then the foreign trucks, and if there's tariffs on those trucks coming in, that might

hurt the trucking industry itself. So he said, well, in certain instances, we can push that back to November first, so that we can get a better deal and maybe get more of a negotiation with those countries where those trucks are coming from. So again, it's been one of these flexible situations to get us to a fair trade situation as opposed to a free trade situation. Liberation Day was a word I'm looking for as far as April

to second, not Freedom Day, Liberation Day. As far as our trading partners and as far as the terriffs are concerned, this is all starting to come in a place. Different companies out there, and we may not be able to get them all today, but we'll get to those over

the next couple of days. Some of these companies that were kind of holding back on some of their predictions of where they were going to be by the end of the year, And of course the experts or the people writing the stories about it would say, well, you know, because the uncertainty of the American economy and the uncertainty of tariffs and the possibility of inflation and the possibility

of recession and all this nonsense. Basically, and again, as I've said before, trying to talk down the economy, trying to manufacture a recession as opposed to encouraging people to stay the course. I mean, you remember back when Russia invaded Ukraine and all of a sudden, we've already had gas prices from the first year of the Biden administration,

gas price has already gone up a full dollar. Then they went up another dollar right after the Russia invaded Ukraine and was approaching by the June of twenty twenty two. After the Russians had invaded. In February of twenty two, gas prices nationwide hit an average across the board of five dollars per gallon, and back then they were talking

about still talking about transitory inflation. They interviewed one of the spokes spokespeople for the administration and said, you know, given the fact that gas prices are four dollars and fifty cents and five dollars a gallon in certain places, how long do you expect the American people to do this in order to support Ukraine? And their attack was as long as it takes. And the spoon fedric urgittators in the mainstream media at that point and said, well, okay.

And yet you would think inflation is out of control. You'd almost think that inflation is nine point one percent like it was in twenty twenty two, when hardly anybody at that point in time talked about it. So we'll get into that some of the information, as far as some of the policy numbers, and as well as we're starting to see a focus on some of these companies actually upping their guidance in terms of we think we're going to have a pretty good year, where we were

before saying not so good. We'll pick this up on the other side. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW DO.

lack of an FIA super license. NHR news Elite Motorsports announced that RNL Carriers, based in Wilmington, Ohio, a global transportation provider, has signed a multi year deal to become the primary sponsor of the Elite Motorsports Top Fuel dragster that will be driven by Motorsports legend Tony Stewart beginning in the twenty twenty six Mission Foods NHR Drag Racing season.

the matter. And in fact, a lot of people have been talking about the Federal Reserve and what they're planning on doing on October the on their meeting in October the twenty eighth and twenty ninth of this month, as to whether or not they're going to lower interest rates or what they're going to do they're going to hold rate steady, just exactly what they're going to do. A lot of people are predicting that they're going to have two more rate cuts by the end of the year.

If they're going to do that, they better get on it because we're running out of months. But again, people are focusing on, well, you know, if you look at what the Federal Reserve minutes said back then when they met, those were released the September meeting, were released the first part of October, and I was pulling out some of that stuff, and I'm seeing people referencing that, and I just want to address a couple of things in there.

Despite what we're hearing. The Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve,

and this was the story back on October. The eighth Federal Reserve on Wednesday, and that was back then released the minutes from their central Bank's monetary policy meeting last week, which some showed that while policymakers anticipated for their interest rate cuts, they remained committed to bringing inflation back to its two percent target, which is exactly what they've been talking about all along, except in September of twenty twenty four,

when they wanted Kamala Harris to become president. They lowered interest rates by half a percentage point to push her across the line, to try to make things seem as far as the Biden administration going on better, even though interest rates or I'm sorry, the inflation rate was still nowhere near two percent, and they blamed it and they said, well, we're concerned about the jobs market right now and we need to prop that up a little bit, even though

there was no signs that the job market was softening. But again that's the excuse they used, Lion Jerry Powell and the boys. The most recent regarding the Crewman's consumer price index was two point nine percent a year over year for the month of August, all the feds preferred inflation gage. The personal consumption expenditure was up to two point seven percent year over year. Now, the personal consumption expenditures,

you know, you have this consumer price indcks. Well, by the way, that was supposed to be released last week because of the government shut down to bringing the people back in on furloughing those people, and they're going to be releasing that data I think either Thursday or Friday

of this week. But we're going to have those numbers then, But what we have the CPI, the consumer price index, which is the entire basket of items that are out there, all the way from avocados to zinc and everything in between, all the services, everything that has sold, everything that has purchased, everything that is available for sale, where those prices are even in the services business, where you know, the services prices are up here, service prices are down over here.

So everything across the board, everything that goes into the economy is in that number. The personal consumption expenditures is more in line with what do people do on a daily basis, what are their normal purchases. Well, your normal purchases are you fill up your car gas, you have certain repairs done in your car, You buy a certain amount of clothes, you eat, you know, you buy groceries and those sorts of things. So it's the stuff that you do on almost a daily basis in terms of

what you spend your money on. Now, the high ticket items like you know, buying furniture or refrigerators, washer and dryer, or a new car or something like that, those are some of the things that you do periodic. I mean you do that like once every three years, four years or thereabouts. It might well, we won't get into me, because I don't buy I've had the same car for twenty some years now. It's still running and it's still doing the job. But anyway, it's a story for another day.

But the consumer or the producer or the personal consumption expenditures is more in line with what we do on a daily basis and at a better gauge as far as what inflation is doing and how it's affecting the actual individuals as opposed to the entire economy itself. So when they talk about the personal consumption expenditure at two point seven percent versus the overall consumer price index at two point nine, we're a little bit closer to that

two percentage point range. Metrics have been noticeably lower earlier in the year when the consumer Price Index was a two point three and PCE is with point two point two in April. But again that's when things started kicking in. And I keep talking about the fact that some of these contracts that we saw as far as UAW, the railroad workers, ups, dock workers and so on, all of

those have kicked in. And if you go back and we've talked about that on this program that a lot of those contracts were like a fifty to sixty percent increase from their previous contract over the next six years, which means that all of their wages, plus the fact that they've got kind of a kick in like retroactively and a lump sum payment just to sign the contract that was done in that particular month, and then a ten percent increase in their wages every year for the

next six years. So when you've got a ten percent increase in wages with dock workers, auto workers, ups drivers, railroad workers and stuff, that's going to have an effect on the economy. And eventually that's going to increase prices. And it's not because of tariffs, it's not because of some of the other factors they're talking about. It's the

actual wages themselves going up. And again i'm not criticizing the fact that some people that had their contracts expire the month of the year during the period of time when we were involved with the plandemic, and they had to postpone those negotiations until twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three when things got back away from the supply chain issues and that, and they actually got to the negotiating table, and you figure out a period of time

between twenty nineteen roughly and maybe twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three where they had been going under the old contract that had not been renewed. I can see people saying, well, far wages haven't gone up in four or five years, were behind because of the inflation caused by the pandemic and thereafter and then getting into the Biden administration, went in twenty twenty two, you had inflation

in the month of June go up nine percent. If you're still doing the same wages that you were doing prior to the pandemic, you're really hurting. So again, people keeping up with inflation, keeping up as far as wages are concerned. I don't have a problem with that, But don't sugarcoat it and say, well, you know, our prices are going up, but it's other factors other than salaries and wages. Be honest about it and say this is

what's causing the inflation to a certain extent. But again they talk about in here that they wanted to be concerned about was inflation. FOMC, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee noted that participants generally thought that this year's tariff increase had put upward pressure on inflation. Some remarked that these effects appeared to have been somewhat muted to date

relative to expectations from earlier in the year. So again, here it is a situation where they were expecting inflation to go up tremendously as a result of the tariffs, and it's almost like these so called experts, which are supposed to have their finger on the pulse of the economy are shot when it didn't happen, and they're like scratching their heads. Well, we said this was going to happen, and it hasn't happened yet. We'll talk about this coming up.

I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck a Network seven hundred WLW.

without bail. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the threat shameful and said anyone who targets elected officials should face the full weight of the Justice Department. Jeffries, for his part, thanked police and said pardoning rioters has put communities at risk.

referendum if that happens. Covington City leaders are considering a plan to let people carry open alcohol containers in parts of downtown. The proposal would create a common consumption area from Eighth Street to River Center along Madison Avenue, allowing drinks in marked cups while shopping or walking. Mayor Ron Washington says other communities have done this without problems. The hours under review would be five to ten pm on Thursdays and five to five to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Your next update is with Lee Mawin at one o'clock breaking news anytime. I'm Travis Laird News Radio seven hundred l w you ever wonder how far.

near record warmth this time of year seen across southern Texas. Tuesday, seven hundred w l W. I'm Kevin Gordon is America's Trucking Network.

I wish I had the paper with me. But what they talk about as far as economists, the definition of an economist is somebody that will tell you why something they predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

they talk about in there during their discussions. The minutes added that the policymakers generally thought inflation would be closer to target, but the higher terriffs, with some observing that the business contacts they had indicated that they were going to be raising prices and they were surprised that it hasn't raise prices, and that they were surprised that terifts haven't raised prices, even though this is the thing that's been holding them back, saying that, well, we expect teriffs

to increase prices, so we're worried about inflation in the future, so we're going to hold back on interest rate cuts. Now we're nine months into this and they're still saying that, well, we're not seeing it yet, but we may see it by the end of the year or early next year, so they keep pushing off when they expect to see

this budge in inflation. And then even lion Jerry Powell has come out and said that the tariffs, the way it would work, would be it would be a one time of raise in inflation that particular period, but it would not be long term. And so with that in mind, why are you so worried about inflation over the next six months when it's going to be a one time increase.

I just you know, the clarification of what they actually say and what the numbers actually are, the fact that their predictions are not happening, and yet they're still holding to it and saying, well, it's gonna come. You know, it reminds me, and I've said this before, reminds me of remember when they used to have what it was, the Globe and the other rag and you know.

added to the Federal Reserve Board as Stephen Maren. He is a person that is in the in the Trump administration, and he has been very adamant he wanted to see the interest rate coming down at full half a percentage point, whereas everybody else settled on that quarter percent interest rate decrease.

And again they're talking in here, and it blows me away that they it's like they're just looking at this one month in time as opposed to folks, we've been making this prediction for the last nine months and it hasn't happened. It ought to be indication that ain't gonna happen. So maybe we can start focusing on something else. But again, that's the Federal Reserve. Then we have. And this is the guy that really boggles my mind. He is the the president of the Chicago FED. He's a guy by

the name of Austin Goldsby. Now, if you're not familiar with him, he was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to Obama during the Obama administration and after that, he was one of these guys that when they needed a liberal economist on one of these shows to talk about or downgrade the first Trump administration, he'd be out there talking about it, how you know, all things were so much better during the Obama years and we did this and we did that, when in fact it was

a lie. And he's you know, all this sort of stuff. I mean, I remember seeing some of the stuff that he would predict and some of the stuff that he had talk about. But he's now on the Federal Reserve board, and so he is now being interviewed by all these different people. Federal Reserve Bank President Austin Goldsby discussed the impact of government shutdown would have on the agency, inflation

and more on the claimant countdown. This was on Fox Business, this claim and Holds this show, and he was on there. Now I've talked about this. They talk about how the government reports that the Federal Reserve relies on that that's going to call into question the accuracy of those numbers. Again, I point to the fact that as we have learned, and like I said, we have had in the last year, or with Trump involved with anything, we have stuff that goes on year after year after year after year, and

people with common sense will say, why is that happening? Oh, that's just the way it is. Well with the Trump administration and what he does is it winds up being like the Wizard of Oz that pull back the curtain and see the guy back there just manipulating the buttons to make it seem like this grand wizard up there is some sort of all seeing, all knowing individual and they pull the curtain back and realize it's just a

human being of faking it. And with so many things that the Trump administration has pulled the curtain back on, and people have said, well, yeah, okay, well why is this being done?

worried about where these economic data is coming from. Well, because of the Trump criticizing the Federal Reserve and especially Jerome Powell and saying that, you know, he thinks that guy should be fired and replaced, and the fact that the Federal Reserve does certain things, people started taking a

look at the individual members of the Federal Reserve. We have one person that resigned recently as a result of maybe some improprieties that they did as far as as far as her individual finances were concerned, possibly mortgage fraud.

The one that the other one, Lisa Cook, that being talked about trying to force her to retire or resigned because she had done the same thing where she claimed that the house she lives in is her permanent resident, got the loan on that and then later on bought a vacation home base basically for rental property, and claimed that that was her permanent home and then you'd get a better interest rates on that. So that's mortgage fraud.

And here is a member of the Federal Reserve. Here's somebody who's an economics professor up in University of Michigan doing stuff that you and I would go to jail for, and yet they think it's okay. Oh, it was just a mistake, you know, it was an oversight. She didn't know what was she talking about. This was the first time she bought this house. So, in other words, we've got somebody who's unqualified, somebody who doesn't know much about

economics on the Federal Reserve. We have the fact that as I dug into and found out, the Federal Reserve employees twenty three thousand people. Twenty three thousand people. Now what do those people do? Are they doing economic work?

Are they doing these studies? And as we've seen as a result of the shutdown, when they want unemployment numbers, when they want sales numbers, these different organizations like Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, they take the data that's available from these states and individual organizations and they have put

the numbers together and come up with these predictions. So makes me question, well, why isn't the Federal Reserve, Why is the Federal Reserve, who's supposed to be this independent organization. Why are they relying on this data from other places? Why aren't they producing this themselves? Because if they're independent, there would be no bias and they would come up

with a clean decision. So this Austin Goldsby was on this interview and it was just absolute amazing, talking about all the stuff that he thought should be done and some of the stuff that needed to be done, talking about interest rate cuts and talking about the labor organs. In fact, in there he said that he was not sure why that interest rate cut was done back in September of twenty twenty four. He was dodging around that wasn't admitting the fact that it was political in nature.

So it was interesting to see that. But again, anytime I see this guy on the news, I know that we're going to get a bias reporting from him in terms of what is going on, because he is a diehard liberal. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW.

and that allowed me to play any place.

gave on Fox Business News. It was interesting in there that he was talking about all this stuff, about all this hyperbole about well, we want to see interest, we want to see the inflation rate getting back down to a two percent range, we want to see this, we want to see that, and then he starts talking about how well you know, with the possibility of inflation coming from tariffs, which we haven't seen up to this point, but we don't want to get into a situation like

we did back in the early days of the Biden administration where we were calling inflation transitory, when in fact it was ongoing for a year year and a half before they decided to do anything about it. And now they're using that as an excuse in terms of why they're not cutting interest rates because they're afraid of inflation increasing as a result of something that's been going on for nine months that hasn't caused inflation. It's just very

interesting to see just wants to see that. You know, he keeps talking about that the tariffs have been in the past eleven percent of the economy, eleven percent of what we have taken in as far as revenue, as far as the government, and he is insisting or he was talking about he would like to see that be still in that eleven percent range, where that can't be if we're charging additional tariffs on other countries to balance that fair trade, to get it to more fair trade

as opposed to free trade. So again, it was a lot of a lot of excuses for why they are not lowering interest rates, blaming this on past mistakes of the Fed, which is now being done where they're making mistakes now that they're going to be talking about a year from now, the mistakes that they made now by not lowering interest rates.

reported in August. The only year over year increase in twenty twenty five occurred in June, so that was just a one month where the sales for that month was higher than the previous month. But year to date, sales are down nine point two percent overall. So you know, you see a headline where you know, this particular month sales are down twenty five percent. That means that sales were up pretty close to those numbers from the prior year.

And so when you look at this on a yearly basis stretched out over the entire well up to this point nine months or the September report of nine months, sales were only down nine percent. Now ten percent cut or ten percent decrease is not the end of the world. It's not an increase, but it's not you know, twenty percent off for the entire year. It's it's still a significant decrease, but not like the sky is falling or anything along those lines. ACT Research Vice president Steve Tam said,

this was a bigger drop than we expected. I think it's an ongoing reflection of just the angst in the industry. People are concerned that they don't know what to do, so they're not doing anything, and of course, in that vein falls the sales. The other interesting piece I think is the certainly not coincidence, but an impact on mentality.

It's the twenty five percent tariff. Well, right after this story was written, it indicated that the tariffs on truck are going to be pushed back to November the first, in order to get more clarification or a better deal. So how this is going to stack up, how this is going to affect things is a little premature. It's got folks nervous just like everyone else, Tam said, And so the manufacturers in anticipation. I think that, but that also even ahead of that, and of course he's kind

of stuttering there. We're already starting to cut production. And as you and I have talked about in the past, if you don't build it, you can't sell it. So I think they got something going on where they need to ramp up, They're just not going to have the

units available they talked about. In terms of freightliner brand of Diamoner Truck, North America claimed the largest market share they sold thirty three percent of the trucks that were sold that month, represented a thirty three percent decrease from what we're sold the prior year. Western Stars saw sales

declined five percent five point eight percent. Mac Trucks North America September retail sales continue to decline both month over month and year over year, consistent with our market expectation as in fleets navigate. As fleets navigate ongoing economic headwinds. The combination of persistent freight market weakness, declining construction spending, and uncertainly around tariff policy continue to drive fleet caution

in what remains a softer economic move. MAC Trucks, the loan manufacturer to see a sales rise, reported sales increase of thirty two point nine percent from the prior year, So again, talking about the headwinds as they're seeing didn't affect them in that particular month. Volvo Trucks North America sales drop forty point five percent. MAC and VTNA are

both groups of the Volvo Group. International sales drop thirty three point eight, Peterbilt Motor Company sales decrease nineteen point nine and Kenworth Truck Companies sales slid nineteen percent as well. Both Kenworth and Peterbilt are members of the pack are in brands, so again it's on a wait and see. But one of the things they're not talking about enough, in my opinion, is the fact that interest rates are

too high. If you're talking about having to go out and spend seven percent eight percent on a truck loan as opposed to three percent what it was a few

years ago, that's going to be a problem. When you look at some of the possible emissions, and we're still talking about whether these emissions are going to be pulled back and whether or not they're going to go forward as far as the EPA is concerned, which are adding thousands of dollars to the cost of these trucks, and when you look at how these trucks are done as far as the amount of pollution that they do compared to other means and other you know, when you got

wildfire out in California that wipes out everything that they had done to clean up the air over the last twenty years. When one fire in twenty twenty eliminates every effort that they did in twenty years to clean up

the air out there. Then four years later you follow that up with a wildfire there in January, and everything that they've done out there, everything that they've done in terms of the higher gas prices almost five four dollars and fifty cents a gallon out there, because of all the pollution controls, all the emissions controls that they have, all the businesses that they're trying to get their carbon emissions down to zero, all this push, as far as

everything as far as the houses are concerned to be more energy efficient and all that, all that has been totally wasteful and done nothing to impact the climate because of they're ignoring the wildfires and keeping those from getting out of control, and everything that they've done over the last twenty years thirty years now has been completely wiped out by not controlling the fires out there. So if you're concerned about pollution, if you're concerned about polluting the air,

do the things that are easy. Control fires. Don't let fires get out of control. And I keep making the point that if you look at a tractor trailer today, when you see those trucks going down the road, it takes sixty trucks today to equal the pollution from one truck back in nineteen eighty eight. That's how far these emissions have come. And to say that, oh, they're a big pollutant at this point compared to where they were

back then, I think it's ridiculous. And these cars and these trucks are a lot more efficient than they were, and to add thousands and thousands of dollars onto something that is only going to have a minimal effect. And especially when you consider the fact that all of the carbon pollution and all the pollution in the world that's coming from Asia, Russia, China and their factories over there.

see the light at the end of the tunnel. They're optimistic at what is going to happen in the future. And so these are the things that a lot of people aren't talking about and the fact of stuff that we need to talk about here because when you keep hearing this drumbeat of bad estimates or bad predictions, when those predictions don't come true, and we talk about that they aren't going to come true, at least you know you'll be ahead of the curve.