Truck rentals have dropped by around 4-6% on trunk routes during the first 15 days of this month primarily due to untimely rains in many parts of the country, which has damaged fruit and vegetables in the fields and delayed wheat harvesting and procurement in APMC across several states. Prior to the fall, bookings in the January to March period had witnessed a 10-11% growth on a month-on-month basis.
According to a mid-April alert by the Indian Foundation of Transport Research & Training (IFTRT) released previous weekend, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and parts of Karnataka, Bihar and Rajasthan have been worst hit by the crisis.
An official of IFTRT said that "Almost 20% of the truck fleet operating on national permit trunk routes have reverted to intra-state operations in the last week of March but are not able to be employed on local routes and, therefore, are pressing the truck freight market on the national permit trunk routes. Similarly, the 20-25 per cent drop in arrival of summer fruit and vegetables has resulted in surplus truck fleet chasing lower cargo availability from agri-food commodities.”