First off, let me wish all of you a Happy New Year. And secondly, I wish you good luck.

You may or may not need luck, of course, but the truth is I haven’t a clue as to the kind of year you’ll have. Sure, I know, editorials like this are supposed to prognosticate, but I’m no economist. I’m also a coward.

If I had to, I’d say freight levels won’t increase in any big way this year, if at all, even though our own economy is strong overall. The fact is, it’s only truly strong in terms of resource industries, and those products are mostly exported without much domestic processing. It’s the old Canadian story, which leaves most of you no better off. There are strengths in service industries too, but nothing in that mix gets trucked.

Our manufacturing sector is in rough shape for the most part. To some large extent you’re at the mercy of those thing-makers, which are not among the world’s most productive enterprises and therefore not among its most competitive. That’s fine when the Canuck buck is at 70 cents, but when that currency crutch disappears, those Canadian mills and factories face a softening of demand because they can’t cut it on their own merits. That softening of demand can quickly turn into temporary closures or outright bankruptcy, leaving you high and dry. We’ve seen it this past year and we’ll see more of it.

As well, the U.S. economy is hovering on the edge of recession, and there’s no way for us to be insulated from that. When houses aren’t being built in Chicago and Nashville, we don’t export lumber and carpets. We feel the same pain.

But there are good things happening in the larger world beyond North America, which brings mixed blessings. Exporters have opportunities that could mean you do too, but you’re both at the mercy of unfamiliar economic dynamics. I’ve been to several presentations by leading economists in the last couple of months, and there was one clear message, as if we needed reminding: markets are increasingly global, not continental. So the influences over your own business — whether it’s one tractor in Kamloops, 35 in Brandon, or 3500 in Montreal — are also global in the end. Your chances of controlling them are nil. Even the IBMs and Coca Colas of this world can only manipulate things so much.

For all those reasons, I don’t see a lot of good news on the immediate horizon, much as I’d like to say otherwise. And I don’t think there’s much you can do about it.

If it’s any consolation, carriers across the Atlantic aren’t faring much better. Worse, in fact. Largely due to rising fuel prices and skinny margins, at least one analyst thinks that fully a third of carriers in the U.K. will have trouble making it through 2008.

Can you guess why? They can’t pass those fuel price increases on to the shipper, and it’s hitting small operations harder than the big ones. At the same time, with operating ratios in the high 90s, they can’t afford to invest in the most modern — and more efficient — vehicles that would make them more competitive. It’s a familiar story, isn’t it?

So back to luck, I think you’ll need some. There’s the old adage that suggests you construct your own luck by being prepared to grasp opportunity – and by being able to analyze it properly in the first place — and I guess that’s more true than ever. In practice, however, I don’t really know what that means in 2008 because so little is predictable.

Well, let’s amend that a bit. I do know that being ready for the big chance demands an understanding of your costs and also your capabilities, along with a little vision. Or more likely a lot of vision. Too few trucking outfits understand or even monitor their costs, or so I’ve been hearing for donkey’s years, so that’s a bad start for some operators. And given the kind of rate-cutting that’s going on out there, I can only think that even fleet owners and managers who do know their costs are ignoring them and taking the freight even if it’s not really compensatory. Anything to keep the wheels rolling and the driving force intact, I guess.

Still, when I hear of specialized open-deck loads that fetched over $5.00 a mile in a long-term contract being stolen at just over $3.00, I’ve got to wonder. And how about the cross-border 425-mile rounder, daily tanker loads, that was $880 in another long-term deal but purloined at just $500. Is it coincidence that in both those cases the freight will now be pulled by owner-operators?

Folks, you’re killing each other out there.

Which leads me to my real fear, that we Canadians, in trucking and everywhere else, aren’t quite good enough on the vision front. We just don’t see far enough down the road.