Written by Steven Hansen
Headline data for the American Trucking Association (ATA) and the CASS Freight Index show that truck volumes show the year-over-year growth remain deep in contraction.
Analyst Opinion of Truck Transport
Both indices are in contraction year-over-year.
The CASS index is inclusive of rail, truck, and air shipments. The ATA truck index is inclusive of only trucking industry member movements (ATA’s tonnage data is dominated by contract freight).
I put a heavier weight on the CASS index year-over-year which is consistent with rail and ocean freight. It is not logical that truck freight goes up when industrial production and ocean freight decline – not to mention the continuing effects of the trade war and the coronavirus shutdown.
Econintersect tries to validate truck data across data sources. It appears this month that the truck employment rate of growth continues to slow. Please note using BLS employment data in real-time is risky, as their data is normally backward adjusted (sometimes significantly). Additionally, Econintersect believes that the BLS is not capturing all truck employment.
ATA Trucking
American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 5.6% in August after declining 1.4% in July. In August, the index equaled 107.5 (2015=100) compared with 113.9 in July.
Said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello:
The August softness suggests that freight is very uneven in the trucking industry. The trucking sectors that haul for the industrial and energy industries are not seeing the surge in freight like the consumer side of the economy. The industrial loads tend to be heavier, so they count more in a tonnage calculation than most consumer-related loads. Fleets hauling for retailers are generally seeing strong freight volumes. Carriers hauling heavier industrial products generally saw softer volumes in August.
ATA Truck tonnage this month
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source: ATA
CASS FREIGHT INDEX REPORT
The following was reported by CASS:
Further recovery in the freight economy was shown by the Cass Freight Index in August. This supports what we have heard from public carriers across all modes, and we believe the trend of “better” has continued here in September. Expect the Cass Index to move back closer to year-ago levels in the coming months, although we think it will stay in negative territory until 2021. Rail traffic has been growing faster than the Cass Freight Index, but rail is only a small part of this index and a small part of overall freight spend in the U.S. Still, all signs point to an improving economy, and goods movement is getting better every month.
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Source: http://www.cassinfo.com/Transportation-Expense-Management/Supply-Chain-Analysis/Cass-Freight-Index.aspx
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