00:00 Julie

a lot of companies have been talking about tariff refunds. Imagine that. That’s not not where we were, uh, you know, when we’ve when we’ve talked in the past. Does it feel like we have reached a state of equilibrium or is it an equilibrium that you feel like could become off balance again at any moment?

00:20 Speaker B

Oh, Julie, there are still a lot of unknowns, but all things said for our economy, we’re moving forward. We saw a little bit different look in the supply chain over the last couple three months in that small to medium-sized retailers began to bring in inventory a little bit earlier ahead of the section 122 tariffs expiring and new levies on fuel adjustment factors or surcharges from shipping lines. They tend to lag about three months in that formulaic approach. So we saw May, June, July really strong. August looks good too.

01:05 Speaker B

The big box retailers will continue a pretty smooth run here over the next month to six weeks getting prepared for the all-important year-end holiday season, but also back to school and fall fashion.

01:21 Julie

You know, um the tariff volatility may have quieted to some extent. It’s not gone as we know because we’ve had some new tariffs. But now we have fuel volatility. And so how is that affecting the cadence of goods that are that are coming in? What kind of adjustments are are suppliers making?

01:46 Speaker B

Yeah, a couple things right off the bat. One with the war in Iran and the other four conflicts in the Middle East, you still don’t have safe passage through the Red Sea or the Suez Canal. So ships are going around the Cape of Good Hope of Africa, adding 14 to maybe 21 days of steaming time, higher fuel prices, more burn on that energy, means a more expensive route on the vessel voyage side. A little bit closer to home, diesel prices are up by about a third since February 28th. Many of our truckers are small to medium-sized businesses. They can’t necessarily just absorb these price shocks, and they don’t always have the juice to pass it on to their customer. So there’s some gaps here especially around the cost of energy that have put the pinch on some of the service providers.