Truck tonnage in June soars 7.9% year-over-year

From Transport Topics.

Truck tonnage in June soared 7.9% above the same month last year, American Trucking Associations’ For-Hire-Truck Tonnage Index released July 19 showed.

Sequentially, from May to June, the index increased by 2.7% after showing a 0.3% improvement in May.

The index equaled 120.1 in June (2015=100) versus 116.9 in May.

“June’s jump tells me a couple of things. First, the transition in the freight market from spot back to contract continues. ATA’s tonnage index is dominated by contract freight, so while the spot market has slowed as freight softens, contract carriers are backfilling those losses with loads from shippers reducing spot market exposure. Essentially, the market is transitioning back to pre-pandemic shares of contract versus spot market,” Bob Costello, chief economist at ATA, said in a statement.

“Second, and perhaps equally important, while economic growth is expected to be soft overall in the second quarter, the goods economy wasn’t as bad as feared.”

The increase in the June index is the 10th consecutive year-over-year gain and the biggest jump since June 2018, Costello said.

Trucking serves as a barometer of the U.S. economy, representing 72.5% of tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation, including manufactured and retail goods.

According to Costello, in May, the index was up 3.5% from a year earlier. During the second quarter, the index rose 1.1% from the previous quarter and 4.6% from the same quarter in 2021.

Trucks hauled 10.23 billion tons of freight in 2020. Motor carriers collected $732.3 billion, or 80.4% of total revenue earned by all transport modes, ATA said.

See the complete article online at Transport Topics.