Mr. Morris:Our company has been afeetcfd by the peer groupings as you have commented on. While our fleet does have an large number of straight trucks leased, (>50%) these vehicles contribute only 16% of the total miles we operate annually. As a result, our Unsafe Driving scores are negatively afeetcfd. It seems as if we are being compared to carriers that do not have the same rate of inspections. Our ratio of Time Weighted Severity Points / (Ave. Power Units * Utilization Factor) is 1.00 and our resulting percentile rank is 75.6. Yet many freight carriers with ratios that are twice as high are rated in the 45th percentile or lower. With 84% of our mileage on tractor/trailer combinations operating over the road, it seems inappropriate that we would be grouped into the straight truck catagory along with FedEx, UPS, Utility companys etc. Your thoughts?

Jim-The economy is dielnfteiy a major force in the trends from 2008.It's possible that forecasters are feeling gloomy, and their long-term GDP growth forecasts have been affected by the short-term economic woes.But reading the numbers, VMT growth slowed WAY before the economy cratered. As I read things, it looks like the forecasts are moving towards a belief that things in the future will look like they did from 2001-2007, rather than from 1992 through 2000. In some ways, what's happening is that an OLD vintage of super-over-optimistic forecasts that seemed reasonable in the 1990s is going away, and a NEW vintage of semi-optimistic forecasts that match the early 2000 s is coming into force.Here's what I think has changed in the models:1) Forecasters now think that oil prices are going to remain high. As recently as 2008, ALL of the major oil forecasts showed oil prices at ~$30/barrel and roughly flat/declining as far as the eye can see. The runup that started in 2005 was seen as a temporary blip. But even though the economy is still struggling mightily, oil prices are high so high ascending oil prices are now built into the models. (Incidentally, from what I've seen the models are based on assumptions that gas will be ~$3 per gallon).2) Forecasters now better understand how consumers react to high gas prices. For a couple of decades, gas price blips had no appreciable effect on demand. When gas prices went from $1 to $1.20, nobody batted an eye everyone kept buying. So the professional opinion was that gas price elasticity was incredibly low people would continue to drive no matter how high prices got. But it seems that gas at $4 a gallon has really made a dent in people's appetite for travel. Elasticity is higher than people thought. Couple that with higher than expected gas prices, and you get a significant dampening effect on driving.3) The understanding of demographics seniors driving less, fewer teens and young people working may have changed, altering long-term estimates of trip generation.There are probably ot