Truckonomics : News and views about trucking and the economy.  
By Advance Business Capital 
John Austin has owned Golden Chick Fried Chicken in Lampasas, Texas since 1983, and for the last twenty-six years, his chicken sales have been a reliable leading indicator of the country’s economic health, particularly the trucking industry.

Austin’s Golden Chick is located on South Key Avenue, which is a somewhat misleading address, since it’s actually the confluence of three major highways. For a few miles, US highways 183 and 281 join and share the same strip of pavement before forking in different ways. The highways run from the Canadian to Mexican borders and at any given moment, the wide rushing road in front of Austin’s restaurant is the equivalent of a temporary—very temporary—city of thousands of people, several thousand a day. Some of those people, when they pass the Golden Chick sign, get hungry and pull over.  Sixty percent of his business comes from the highway.

Austin is a lifetime Texan with an easy, droll manner whose only sartorial embellishment is a drawerful of colorful suspenders. (“Working with food, you can’t be hitching your belt.”) He’s a fit 60 years old and doesn’t look like he eats fried chicken every day. (“Quality control.”)

Austin’s fast-food operation is not typical of fried chicken sales nationwide, which have actually risen during the recession. “If you count only our in-town business, trade is steady. Chicken is an inexpensive meal for most people. But our highway business has been down. There’s just less highway traffic and that means less traffic for us.”

And truckers are a big part of the highway traffic.

“We see a lot of truckers.” says Austin. “I’m always glad to see a truck driver. They come in with appetites.”

For the last year, though, Austin has seen fewer truckers. “I don’t monitor the trucking industry.” he says. “All I monitor is my part of the highway. But I can tell you my truck driver sales were down, just like all my highway sales, painfully down.”

Lately, though, sales have been picking up. “There’s a bit more traffic. It started around September. The trend is definitely up. More truckers come in because there are more of them on the road.”

So what about chicken sales per driver? Is that up?

“Not that you’d notice. Good times or bad, truckers eat a lot of chicken. They eat white meat, dark meat, wings, breasts, tenders, just about anything we put out. They’re usually in a hurry, which I suppose is one reason they like chicken. It’s fast.”

So what does Austin see in his chicken-fried crystal ball?

“I’m an optimist,” Austin says, snapping his suspenders. “I see more truckers, more take-out, higher chicken sales.”

Austin’s observations are in line with most trucking indicators, which show higher traffic since late August. The TransCore™ freight index reports November spot freight was 65% over last November’s. Of course traffic last November was a disastrous drop from the year before, so all things are relative. Still, the trend is positive. Whether that will hold up is what predicting is all about, but the Fried Chicken Indicator is at least as reliable as anything the government has come up with lately.

In this economy, truckers are trying all sorts of things to get loads up and maybe one way is to stop at the next highway chicken stand and order the Combo Deluxe. That may sound like magical thinking—mistaking the effect for the cause—but right now trucking, like everything else, could use a little magic. For our part, we intend to do double loads at the Golden Chick in Lampasas. And while we’re at it, we’ll lend a hand to the nation’s potato industry. Extra fries, please.

Provided as a public service by Advance Business Capital. 
www.advancebcap.com/