At the start of the pandemic, household goods services across the U.S. either slowed down or stopped completely. As demand continued to build during 2020 and the start of this year, the lack of capacity has only become worse with time, now significantly impacting some organizations’ U.S. mobility programs. Here we discuss the specific household goods challenges that we are currently experiencing, what Cartus is doing to meet these challenges, and key recommendations that organizations can follow to help reduce the impact delays have on their relocation programs.
To find out more on current U.S. real estate market trends download our white paper, The Unprecedented 2021 Real Estate Market – What It Could Mean for Your Relocation Program.
As the impact of COVID-19 eases, the household goods industry has seen increasing demand among all customer-types, which has been a major influence on capacity challenges and delays. Indeed both corporate and U.S. military moves that had been on hold during the pandemic are now being implemented. In addition, we are in the middle of peak season, which looks likely to extend through to August and September, further exacerbating delays for relocating employees moving around the country.
The high level of activity in the U.S. real estate market also means that the consumer segment of the household goods industry is extremely busy. Current property market trends are causing relocating employees to adjust their move dates due to quicker home sales, which is proving challenging given the already congested household goods industry.
In some states, including California, delays to household goods services were so significant in June that organizations are unable to relocate employees until July or even later in the year. A contributing factor to these impacted markets is that people are moving out of the area with little return traffic. This in turn has created a secondary challenge—the imbalance between a surplus of containers and other shipping/moving equipment in one area without the need to return them to areas where they are desperately needed.
Many household goods services have also reported higher-than-normal packing crew labor shortages, including truck drivers. This is largely due to drivers deciding to retire or change job during the pandemic as well as training schools being temporarily closed last year.
In addition to household goods services, delays to international shipments are having a significant impact across U.S. ports on the west coast, with multiple container vessels unable to offload. Read our blog, Global Pandemic: Ongoing Impact on Household Goods Shipments for more
The Cartus Global Supplier Network is made up of the world’s leading suppliers within their field, including household goods providers, who understand our clients’ mobility needs and the importance of providing total support to the families we help relocate. Cartus will continue to work closely with our selected household goods partners to ensure we minimize the impact this situation may have on our clients and their relocating employees, and will update our clients of any further developments.
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