January truck tonnage turns in strong performance, reports ATA

Truck tonnage was solid to begin 2015, according to data issued this week by the American Trucking Associations (ATA).

Seasonally-adjusted (SA) for-hire truck tonnage in January was up 1.2 percent at 135.7 (2000=100) on the heels of a revised 0.1 percent increase in December. And on an annual basis SA tonnage was up 6.6 percent compared to January 2014, which the ATA said marks the single largest annual gain in more than a year.

The ATA’s not seasonally-adjusted (NSA) index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by fleets before any seasonal adjustment, was 126.9 in January and was 3.5 percent below December’s 131.5. Compared to January 2014, the NSA was up 3.6 percent.

As defined by the ATA, the not seasonally-adjusted index is assembled by adding up all the monthly tonnage data reported by the survey respondents (ATA member carriers) for the latest two months. Then a monthly percent change is calculated and then applied to the index number for the first month.

ATA officials said that the organization has revised the seasonally adjusted index back five years as part of its annual revision, adding that for all of 2014, tonnage was up 3.7 percent, which was slightly better than the 3.4 percent originally reported. In 2013, ATA said the index increased 5.5 percent.

“Truck tonnage continued to improve in January, marking the fourth straight gain totaling 3.5 percent” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello in a statement. “Last year was slightly better for truck tonnage than we originally thought and I am expecting that momentum to continue in 2015.”

And since truck tonnage bottomed out in March 2014, the ATA executive said tonnage has risen a cumulative 6.7 percent since then. 

The relatively decent beginning to 2015 for truck tonnage in some ways reflects various positive macroeconomic indicators, including improving jobs numbers, low fuel prices, and strong GDP growth.

Even though the holiday shopping season may not have turned in as strong a performance as originally anticipated, many industry experts explained it was still strong and, in some ways, has served as a springboard into the New Year, with consumers feeling more confident due to lower gasoline prices, and subsequently spending more discretionary income that is increasing truck tonnage and freight flows.

CarrierDirect President Joel Clum recently told LM that since July 2014, when freight levels were coming off of a very strong second quarter due to the aftereffect of the early 2014 Polar Vortex and pent-up demand, freight market activity has been brisk.

“Things just kept growing,” he said. “Tonnage levels have headed up, driver capacity certainly was not figured out from a shortage standpoint, and rates continued to rise in the spot market and the contractual market for truckload and pricing power continued to be in the asset-based carriers’ corner, with many finding ways to increase base rates as the year went on. What we started seeing mid-year was not an anomaly and was real. The biggest thing that changed was that it did not stop, even though the end of 2014 tailed off a bit but not at the typical level of drop-off that we usually see.”