The American Trucking Associations (ATA) released on Tuesday its Freight Tonnage Index for December and all of 2022.
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The ATA Index is based on a monthly survey of the organization’s many members. The ATA notes that the Index is dominated by contract freight as opposed to spot market movements.
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For the month, the Index was just barely positive versus 2021, up 0.3%, after falling 2.5% in November.
For the full year, tonnage was up 3.4% versus 2021, which perhaps surprisingly was the strongest percentage growth in four years.
The results also marked the 16th consecutive year-over-year monthly increase.
ATA’s chief economist says Q4 overall saw signs of freight volume weakness.
“Despite the small gain in December, for-hire truck tonnage clearly decelerated during the final quarter in 2022,” Costello said. “The index’s yearly gains were primarily driven by strength in the first half of 2022, so despite a marked slowdown as the year ended, for the year as a whole tonnage posted a very solid year overall.”
December’s result out the ATA’s index at a level of 115.2, with 2015 serving as the baseline year of the average month in 2015 (index = 100). That means that since 2015, freight tonnage is up 15.2%, with compounding probably rising a little under 2% per year on average.
A graphic charting the change in the Index since 2018 is shown below.
The ATA Index is based on a monthly survey of the organization’s many members. The ATA notes that the Index is dominated by contract freight as opposed to spot market movements.
Source: ATA
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Trucking represents 72.2% of US tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation, including manufactured and retail goods, according to the ATA.
Although they measure different things, the ATA numbers can be compared to the Shipments Index from Cass Information Systems’ monthly freight report, which found freight shipments (mostly truckload freight) were down 3.9% versus December 2021, which the report notes was a particularly strong month.
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