Trucking Tonnage Index Jumps In October 2015

The American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) trucking index increased 1.9% in October, following a decrease of 0.7% during September.

From ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello:

It was good to see tonnage increase nicely in October after contracting a total of 1.6% in August and September. However, tonnage has been overall pretty flat this year, as October’s reading is just shy of January’s level.

Like I’ve said over the last couple of months, I remain concerned about the high level of inventories throughout the supply chain. We recently learned that inventories throughout the supply chain and relative to sales rose in September, which is not a good sign. This will have a negative impact on truck freight volumes over the next few months,

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Compared with one year ago, seasonally adjusted tonnage increased 2.0 %.

Econintersect tries to validate data across data sources. It appears this month that jobs growth says the trucking industry was unchanged month-over-month (red line). Please note using BLS employment data in real time is risky, as their data is normally backward adjusted significantly.

This data series is not transparent and therefore cannot be relied on. Please note that the ATA does not release an unadjusted data series (although they report the unadjusted value each month – but do not report revisions to this data) where Econintersect can make an independent evaluation. The data is apparently subject to significant backward revision. Not all trucking companies are members of the ATA, and therefore it is unknown if this data is a representative sampling of the trucking industry.