UNITED STATES - After months of stressful tensions in the trucking and transportation side of business, is there finally a plateau emerging on the scene? The Wall Street Journal provides reports from those within the industry to show that the boom could be reaching its bust, as orders for big rigs eased back last month.

We reported on the recently tight trucking market, and because of the tensions in transportation, many companies have created unique ways to gather truck drivers and larger fleets. There has been a 19 percent drop in truck orders from August’s record of 53,069, showing this dip and plateau in trucking needs. The demand remains high, however, with orders up 90 percent when compared with September of 2017.

After two record-setting months in a row, the trucking industry could be settling—data from ACT Research shows that 42,800 new Class 8 trucks were ordered for fleets to haul goods long distances.

“You can’t continue to have record order months,” President of Columbus, Indiana-based ACT Kenny Vieth shared. “The expectation would be that we could continue to see orders in the 40,000-unit range through the end of the year, but… it’s unlikely that we’re going to revisit an order number with a 5-handle.”

An expedited freight rate is the result of the increase in U.S. shipping demand. Now there is a need to find available trucks. The sum total of this sequence is that orders have grown throughout the year. With the declination of trucking shipments, a 12 percent dip from August to September can be seen, according to the news source. There was also a 1.8 percent dip in the American Trucking Association’s for-hire truck tonnage index from July to August. There was, however, 4.5 percent spike year-over-year—the smallest increase in 12 months.

“September was not as acutely painful as June or July were,” for shippers looking for trucking capacity, according to Chief Executive of Transfix, Drew McElroy. “I think there was a certain amount of tapering or just, ‘Let’s wait and see.’”

Over 500,000 new trucks have been ordered by fleets over the past year, as companies take aim at the trucking situation, according to WSJ.

“Orders are not builds, and builds will be far below what the order rate is,” Derek Leathers, Chief Executive of Werner Enterprises, said. “More importantly, out of the actual builds that take place, you need more trucks today to do the exact same number of miles you did a year ago. Because shorter length of haul means more percentage of your day spent loading or unloading… and less time actually moving freight.”

Will the plateau in trucking continue or will there be a spike as we near the holidays? AndNowUKnow will continue to report the latest.