Coronavirus has heavily hit several businesses including auto transport. The imposed travel restrictions by the government have drastically reduced public transportation and ride-sharing services. This is because an increasing number of people are preferring to commute in their cars to avoid close contact with others.
Where people are increasingly spending on buying a car, they are less spending on hiring car transportation services. Let us see more about the impact of COVID-19 on the auto transport sector.
How has COVID-19 impacted auto transport service?
COVID-19 has badly impacted the auto transport sector including the business and the employees in several ways. It has caused carriers to deviate to look for new methods to lessen contact at the time of delivery, and pickup. They have to find different routes to get assistance for the basic things on the road such as hot meals, lodging, and bathroom breaks.
Talking about overseas shipment pickups, the chances of contracting the virus from the shipments from destinations that have a high rate of infection are higher.
The drivers taking shipments from these countries were required to take additional precautions such as wearing facemasks, continuous cleaning of the vehicles, wearing disposable gloves, and sanitizing hands now and then.
Types of Companies That Will Dominate in 2020
The impact of coronavirus has led to a massive increase in online automobile sales. This has assisted three major types of auto transport firms that are going to dominate the automobile market in 2020.
- Lead Aggregators who gather information about the consumer on their website and sell it to different transportation brokers.
- Auto Transport Brokers act as an intermediate between the consumers and the carriers. They use the customer data to call consumers with shipping quotes.
- Car Carriers who hire haulers for transportation of cars on open or enclosed trailers.
What Trends Are Expected in The Auto Transport Sector?
The fluctuating economy and evolving auto transportation technology is likely to result in the following trends in the automobile transport sector.
- Capacity crunch
- Environmental advantages
- Mandatory installation of an electronic logging device
- An increase in shipment price as the truckers won’t work for long hours will cause the shipment duration to extend.
How Will Be 2021 For The Auto Transport Industry?
The long-term financial impact on the automobile transport industry is hard to predict. Due to depression/ recession, the number of vehicles to be shipped in 2021 is expected to stay suppressed. The present COVID-19 restriction, slow government response, and future prediction, clearly show that along with the economy, the overall auto sales are likely to drop sharply.
There will be a continued rise in the purchase of cars and other automobiles. Car dealers would require providing contactless procedures to avoid face-to-face interaction at the dealership.
Conclusion
Presently, the shipping industry is going for a loss. Almost everybody is striving hard to lower their losses. Speculations state that there would be a further reduction in rates as carriers compete to get more shipments. With this rise in competition, shipping firms, auto transport brokers, and car haulers would need to focus more on offering superior customer service.
