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ast week launched the start of a crucial period for trucking and its major customer groups, as the main retail sales season of 2004 got under way.

Although there are still signs of caution in the marketplace, we also see growing signs of strength.

And if this season turns out to be strong — for the first time in years — it will trigger a chain reaction, what economists call a “virtuous cycle,” that will give the recovery new legs and give truckers of all stripes more freight to haul.

On Nov. 25, two days before the Thanksgiving holiday, the government said the economy had not grown by the sizzling 7.2% annual pace it first reported for the third quarter. Instead, it had grown 8.2%, because businesses spent more heavily than estimated on plant and equipment while slowing their drive to cut inventories even further.

As we have reported, some truckers and their suppliers have cautioned that they have yet to see the kind of robust demand that the economic growth figures imply, even though things are improving. They say many shippers have been slow to ramp up until they are convinced that there is real momentum and not just a short-lived surge.

So we come back to the holidays, and look for them to give us plenty of lasting good cheer.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the biggest day of the year for retail sales, as consumers start buying Christmas presents. It is so important for retailers that it is affectionately called “Black Friday” because it is the first day of the entire year that many of them move into the black, after spending most of the year in the red.

Ahead of that day, the latest economic figures showed more momentum than we had expected, and analysts had already expected Christmas-season sales to grow more than any time since before the recession hit in 2001.

If the sales turn out to be truly strong this season, retailers will clear store shelves at better prices, and then have more confidence in consumer spending to order larger supplies across a broad range of goods for later in the year.

Warehouses will feel the pull and order more from manufacturers, both to restock what they previously had and perhaps to keep more on hand.

Inventories can start growing again, factories start hiring again and the demand can generate more business.

Happy holidays.

This article appears in the Dec. 1 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.

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