Many factors have led to the fall of lumping rates, such as: Lower volume, harder financial times for warehouses and and regular employees accepting lower pay.
- Lower Volume
Lower volume of containers is a big factor in the reduction of lumper rates. With low volume comes less cash flow. This has led to warehouses requiring less lumpers and not able to pay wages that they were able to pay in previous years. - Harder financial times
Increased interest rates, increased government taxes and less business has led to warehouses not being able to pay premium rates for lumper services. This has caused warehouses to try and reduce costs. Lumpers are an easy way for warehouses to save some money by reducing rates. But warehouses are still required to pay high employee costs when using their own employees to do the container unloading and loading in house. - Employees working for less
With the current job market workers are accepting lower pay. This directly affects lumper prices, as warehouses are finding cheaper labour to do the job that lumpers do.