http://www.vendingtimes.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=EB79A487112B48A296B38C81345C8C7F&nm=Vending+Features&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=D5E6BD86A29144C39E1F85695FA0ABA4
Summary
Sources think that as of today or in the future, vendors will do better than other business'. Prices are changing constantly and probably one of the major factor that affects this, is raise in shipping prices. "Freight charges are skyrocketing" says a supplier, "suppliers have been consuming these charges and struggle to stay at the top". If operators don't agree that major prices in goods will begin to increase, than surely they're wrong. Business' have no choice but to increase their prices. Many obvious reasons why freight costs have been increasing is because ocean carriers began to lose profit in the past two years.
The big question was "How Bad Was It"? Well, according to shipping trade press, this so called "economic crisis" extended to the largest carriers (which makes things even worse). "Last year, almost every business lost money and carriers were in financial crisis, the lost of money ranged from 15-20 billion dollars. As the economy shows some sighs of recovery. carriers raised shipping prices (which is odd). Despite sighs of recovery, this alarmed a increase in freight volume. However, shipping industries were still being cautious and afraid of possible recession could decrease demands...again.
On land and in the air, transportation costs are continued to rise into 2011. In conclusion if demands increase then shipping traders will stay steady. If however, demands decrease then shipping traders will lose money.
Connection
One things for sure is that this is inevitable because it's just how business works. It's literally like a stock market, stocks go up and down, you make inferences, and either lose or gain money. From past experience, shipping rates were very high, companies such as USP charged me about 27 dollars just to ship out goods which is too much. Freight charges vary between demands, let's say if you're merchandise inventory was overstocked. Obviously the company will not order until they have sold a reasonable amount. Hence a decrease in demand will have to lead freight charges to decrease. If it was the opposite way around freight charges will obviously...increase.
Reflection
In my opinion, I think I can judge this article based on my experience with freight charges. Now one big question is, instead of using carriers (I understand thats it's a common way to get goods from third world countries) why not just go straight to the manufacturer and order by using a drop ship? Normally in some cases this isn't affordable but for big companies out there they should think about it. Of course small business' would have to use either cars or carriers to get the goods. Another good way to keep shipping traders to have a stable profit is to advertise goods on the internet. There are tons of online companies that sign a contract with carriers to share profit of the goods they sell. So why not other big companies take advantage of this to save some profit and possibly make more income?
