Washington,DC,USA -Transport Topics -11 May 2011: -- The Department of Transportation’s freight transportation services index for March rose 4.8% from a year ago, to the highest level since July 2008, DOT said Wednesday... The freight TSI rose 1.9% from February, the department said in its monthly report... Freight shipments have increased in 17 of the past 23 months but are down 2.1% in the five years from March 2006... The March index rose to a reading of 108.6, which compares with the peak reading of 113.3 set in January 2005. DOT uses a reading of 100 from the year 2000 as a baseline reading... The TSI measures the output of the for-hire freight transportation industry including trucking, rail, inland waterways, pipelines and air freight...* Truckload Capacity Seen Tightening
Independence,OH,USA -The Journal of Commerce Online, by William B. Cassidy -May 10, 2011: -- Four-week slide in barometer index ends, capacity 17 percent tighter than year ago... The weekly Longbow Research Truckload Barometer increased 1.3 percent last week, ending a month-long drop in April, indicating tighter availability of trucks in parts of the U.S., the investment research firm said Tuesday... The barometer was up 46 percent year-over-year April 11 and is now up 17 percent from a year ago, indicating that demand and supply are closer to equilibrium... The weekly index measures available freight against available truckload equipment, climbing higher as capacity contracts, the Wall Street investment firm said... * USA - Intermodal Volume Rises 9% in First Quarter
Washington,DC,USA -Transport Topics -13 May 2011: -- Intermodal traffic volume rose 9% in the first quarter, the fifth straight year-over-year increase, the Intermodal Association of North America said Friday... International container volume rose 9.6% in the quarter to 1.76 million units, IANA said in a statement... Domestic container volume increased 8.8% to 1.12 million units, slightly below the fourth-quarter’s 8.9% year-to-year rise... Trailer volume rose 7.5% to about 412,000 units, and 53-foot trailers jumped 21.7%, the biggest such increase since the first quarter of 2005... Railroad volume is considered an important economic indicator. Intermodal traffic, which tends to be higher-valued merchandise than bulk commodities, uses trains for the long haul and trucks for the shorter distance at either end of the trip... (Photo from farm4.static.flickr)* UCLA-Ceridian Trucking Index Drops 0.5 Percent
Los Angeles,CAL,USA -The Journal of Commerce Online, by William B. Cassidy -May 13, 2011: -- April’s decline followed ‘exceptional’ March gain in fuel-based index... The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index fell 0.5 percent in April after rising 2.7 percent in March, underscoring what the index sponsors called a “fitful” recovery... The index also showed shipping increased in the “heavily trucked” Midwest but declined elsewhere, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic and East North Central states... The fuel-based index rose 3.5 percent year-over-year in April, its 17th consecutive month of growth, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Ceridian said... The Ceridian-UCLA index rose 3.6 percent year-over-year in March and 1.8 percent in February, and has been rising on an annualized basis since December 2009... The index is based on trucker fuel purchases paid for using Ceridian’s electronic card network. Ceridian and UCLA track the location and volume of fuel purchased...* Truck Market Tightens for Shippers, Index Shows
Nashville,IN,USA -The Journal of Commerce Online, by William B. Cassidy -May 13, 2011: -- Truck capacity, costs creating ‘difficult’ environment for shippers, FTR says... Market conditions are worsening for U.S. shippers as truck capacity tightens and fuel prices and surcharges rise, an index released by FTR Associates shows... The FTR Shippers’ Condition Index dropped 48 percent from minus-7.7 in February to minus-11.4 in March. Any index number below zero is unfavorable to shippers... At the same time, FTR’s Trucking Conditions Index has been rising, climbing 34 percent in the same period to 13.30, the company said... Any reading above zero indicates an “adequate” environment for truckers, FTR said, and a reading above 10 signals prices, volumes and margins are “in a good range” ... Normal seasonal weakness early in the first quarter obscured the shifting supply and demand balance in trucking, said Eric Starks, president of FTR...* Truck Spot Market Volume Slipped in April
Hummelstown,PENN,USA -The Journal of Commerce Online, by William B. Cassidy -May 17, 2011: -- TransCore’s North American Freight Index fell 14 percent in April from March, when the index reached its highest level since 2005 after three months of posting record numbers... Spot market truckload volume in the U.S. and Canada, as measured by the TransCore index, rose 23 percent in March from February and 40 percent year-over-year... Despite the drop in April, the index, which measures truck freight movements on the spot market, is still 12 percent higher than it was in April 2010, TransCore said... That indicates the economy is still advancing, though perhaps at a slower pace... TransCore noted that both spot market load volume and truck capacity declined in April, with the load-to-truck ratio dropping three weeks in a row by April 30...
