About the situation on the transport market

Dear customers,

The situation on the European transport market is getting ever more fraught. There is a lot more freight than available loading space. A problem that we have to deal with every day as a cable distributor, and that can also lead to complications with our deliveries.

It is therefore important to us to inform you about the current situation in the transport market, and also make plain that our influence on the current bottleneck in the transport industry is limited to non-existent.

The entire transport business currently finds itself confronted with a massive shortage of transport capacities; in Germany and Europe, a significant oversupply of cargoes is facing a very small volume of hold capacities (source: www.portatio.de; status: 26/09/2017; German example).

Why is that so?

Consignment volumes are steadily growing, whereas the transport capacities are successively declining. Trucks are rather scrapped altogether than buying new vehicles, owing to a massive lack of professional drivers. The German logistics industry alone is currently already lacking ca. 45,000 drivers – and counting.

"The labour market is partly 'swept clean'. Logistics experts are warning of supply bottlenecks and 'serious repercussions for Europe's national economies' (to quote the German Haulage and Logistics Association DSLV).

Besides the pay being too low in parts of the industry, the incisive reasons are primarily rooted in the bad framework conditions:

• Working hours / shift times

• Distance from home / friends and family (stunting social contacts)

• Increasing technical requirements for the drivers

• Reliance on drivers as free loading and unloading staff

• Shortage of parking spaces for breaks and rest periods

• Growing number of checks to enforce partly new legislation, with the corresponding fines

• General traffic situation (construction sites => jams, long-winded diversions through road blocks, etc.)

The problem with attracting new drivers has meanwhile reached dramatic proportions and is now causing sustained bottlenecks unheard of in the past in this shape or form.

We have talked to all the transport companies in our employ. And we would like to emphatically clarify at this juncture that both we and our forwarders are doing everything we can to continue satisfying you, and to ensure that your shipments are handled with as few hitches as possible. It is nonetheless to be expected that the situation will not only remain fraught temporarily, but probably for the long term.

You as our client can also contribute to making the best of this situation as a team:

• Plan with longer terms

• Actively communicate urgent deadlines to us

• Allow for more flexible delivery times

We would like to thank you for your understanding, and assure you that we will also be doing everything we can to satisfy you in the future.

With our best regards,

Your Faber team