Transcon’s Blake Noble talks about what the industry can do to change its outlook in tough times.

American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar coined the phrase, “It’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.” It’s a mindset our country could greatly benefit from adopting … right about yesterday. I wouldn’t for a second claim there’s no real economic pain and challenge going on out there right now; every economic indicator suggests that significant change has occurred (and very quickly), as economic cycles and their history show that it often does.

However, we seem to have gotten our collective selves into a bit of a funk. Let’s call it the South Pacific Pessimistic Plague, which I’d liken to a permanently murky post-Covid hangover, where the chips are so far down and seem to have been for so long that it has become our modus operandi (and a somewhat self-fulfilling one at that) to become increasingly prone to negativity.

I’m the first to admit that I’ve been drawn into this, with the barometer of one’s own situation gauged, not in relation to conventional measures or parameters, but rather against the flow of negative news. It is certainly not healthy, nor conducive to driving the levels of success and aspiration (big or small) we strive for.

The media certainly don’t help, and I’ve all but stopped consuming local print or TV news – there’s simply too much negativity and scaremongering.

I’ve always wondered what our world would look like if the media could only publish successes and project-positive stories. How could that be anything but hugely motivating and inspiring and flip the negative barometer into a vastly more aspirational iteration?

Without question, the two-or-so year span that kicked off in March 2020, when we first became accustomed to Covid-19 dominating our decisions, created some crazy anomalies that we’d have been nutcases to have thought they would ever become the norm; home lending rates at sub-2%, asset finances rates not far behind that and freight volumes that seemed magically to grow before our eyes. The expression “what goes up, must come down”, or indeed, “what goes down, must come up”, surely comes to mind.

Whether weight, debt, fleet or clutter, there’s no denying that it’s generally much easier to gain than lose these things, particularly when they’ve ballooned in a relatively short time.

With so many operators needing to find a way to shed the gain they’ve made during that crazy heyday, it’s understandable to feel challenged. Yet we need to accept that it’s unlikely to happen by itself without a plan of attack … and the right attitude.

While it appears likely that interest rates will, given time, decline, the reality is that they’ll never (in the foreseeable future) shrink back to the wild lows we saw in 2021/22.

It’s up to us all to work with the numbers and formulate a plan to operate within the bounds in place – more than merely operate, but thrive.

As the saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and what a time to pounce on that innovation and creativity and do things like you’ve never done before in a time that’s unlike ever before.

Look offshore; economies aren’t perfect, but a whole lot of green shoots are growing off the back of some serious aspiration. How do we refine our attitude and outlook so that our altitude becomes the positive barometer the country’s crying out for?