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Sunday, December 19, 2021

The Supply-Chain Crisis - Vox Popoli

 Well, that’s not going to help:

Waco, Texas-based Central Freight Lines has notified drivers, employees and customers that the less-than-truckload carrier plans to wind down operations on Monday after 96 years, the company’s president told FreightWaves on Saturday.

“It’s just horrible,” said CFL President Bruce Kalem.

A source close to CFL told FreightWaves that CFL had “too much debt and too many unpaid bills” to continue operating, despite exploring all available options to keep its doors open.

Kalem agreed.

“Years of operating losses and struggles for many years sapped our liquidity and we had no other place to go at this point,” Kalem told FreightWaves. “Nobody is going to make money on this closing, nobody.”

Central Freight will cease picking up new shipments effective Monday and expects to deliver substantially all freight in its system by Dec. 20, according to a company statement.

Denninger sees this as an early sign of deleveraging-based contraction of the money supply.

The simple man (or simple family) has decent reserves, no debt beyond a modest mortgage, paid-for vehicles and thus, while they won’t like a disruption of income or tough times, will be ok.

Nearly all of the so-called “betters” running around screwing you with this or that are the precise opposite.

Indeed, that “virtue signaling” is expensive. Those solar panels? They’re a lease, basically. That Tesla? It has a note on it. That nice, expensive house? It has both the original note and probably a HELOC too. That fabulous nearly-new boat? Anyone care to bet what the odds are the bank actually owns it?

Every one of these levered things has serious and unavoidable cost associated with it. So long as everything is fine in your world that’s ok, or so you think. It all pencils out; you can meet the cash flow requirements and in a low interest-rate environment those look reasonable and safe.

You’re wrong.

If you’re not in debt, you’ll be fine. If you’ve got cash, there will be bargains available. But if you’re leveraged, you can’t control when the loans will be called.

https://voxday.net/2021/12/19/the-supply-chain-crisis/