CNTL

This from CNTL's own job posting:

Type: Full Time - Single - O/O

• Salary: $100,000 - $160,000 per year
• Fuel Subsidy Program: 37.7 cents per litre, equivalent value of over $65,000

Other:

• Competitive, reliable, twice-monthly pay
• Steady work with plenty of miles
• Intermodal freight available 7 days a week
• Fuel Subsidy Program: pay only 37.7 cents per litre
• The value of the Fuel Subsidy Program is over $65,000/year on average
• Up to $2000/year in fuel and safety bonuses
• Be home most nights (layovers are rare)
• Paid wait time at customers, terminals, and ports
• Permitting and plating paid
• Border fees and tolls paid
• Group Insurance (optional)
• Tire Purchase Program
• Cab and Engine Heater Purchase Program
• 24/7 road repairs paid for CN equipment breakdown
• On-the-job training
• 24/7 dispatching
• State-of-the-art technology providing Owner Operator support

• 1400 trucks network-wide
• more than 1,050 owner operators
• fleet of 8,000 chassis
• fleet of 8,000 containers
• 20ft and 40ft container
• 23 intermodal terminals across North America
• Rail connections to 3 coasts and 7 major ports
• 5 logistics parks in Canada and the U.S.

• There was a pre-pandemic over-hype of automated trucking that drove down demand and interest for truckers.
• The pandemic increased need for truckers (because of a short bump in volume of goods), pulling people into the industry. An industry that only looked to have a very tight labour-market.
• Major supply chain changes in load and carry volumes increased until this year when that demand suddenly reversed.
• Right now is the bottom of the demand cycle for trucking and so we have a double negative impact on volumes happening right now.
• Now there are "too many" operators/driver/trucking companies/trucks compared to demand.

This situation has increased competition on major routes for intermodal trucking.

Part of CN's response to this was the purchase of TransX/H&R to decrease wages for intermodal trucking (especially in refrigerated container freight trucking).

Fuller explanation:

As you all know, this is happening in a very liberalized and unregulated trucking market.

In general, intermodal short-trip trucking volume is aligned with all long-haul cargo shipping volume. Long-haul cargo transport volume is aligned with consumption. There is currently low consumption, low volume, and therefore lower demand for intermodal trucking.

Consumption is way down across the board which means that intermodal trucking is in a rather "loose" labour market. Loose labour markets means downward pressure on shipping rates and therefore downward pressure on our wages.

Add to this the increased costs of trucking because of shifting to expensive technologies, more operators on the edge of bankruptcy but with less long-term overhead than established corporations like CN and huge increases in debt/lease costs, sustained high price of fuel, and general costs of living.

All together you get increased competition between established companies with unions and "start-up" or less unionized companies.

The major routes that we are seeing a collapse in intermodal trucking are the same places we had an opportunistic increase in trucking company starts during the pandemic boom in consumption. Montreal-Toronto and Toronto-Moncton.

This is all happening across North America.

Here is a graph of Trucking growth since 2010.