It's been a two and half year run of basically flat US truckload rates for US shippers.
The Cass Information Systems' Linehaul Index measures US per mile truckload rates before fuel surcharge and accessorial fees. It is based on baseline level of 100 that represents truckload rates in January of 2005. Data within this unique index is derived from actual freight invoices paid by Cass for its clients.
As seen in the chart below, after rising substantially in 2014, the Index has basically been flat ever since, with the Index for April, the most recent measure, coming in at 124.6 - about two percentage points below where rates were in January of 2015.
Source: SCDigest from Cass Data
Prior to that, February marked the end of an amazing 13 consecutive months of year-over-year declines in the measure, before that string was finally broken with the 1.0% gain in March versus the same month in 2016. The April number was flat with the prior year and 1% below April of 2015.
What driver crisis?
But there are some signs that may at last be chaging, in what would be bad news shippers and good news for carriers, notably a strong spot market of late. In fact, truckload spot market volumes in May reached their highest level since September 2015, increasing by 7.3% over April and 63% year over year, leading trasnsportation load board DAT Solutions reported this week.
Contracts rate trends usually lag spot market activity by about three months.
So will shippers really see higher rates in the second half of 2017? The trend seems to be moving in that direction for the first time in almost three years - but in the end the real driver as usual will be US economic growth - or lack thereof.
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