The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | Freight Volumes

Winter is notoriously slow for freight, but it should be picking up by now. We’re doing okay but, not great.

Group Reports Drop in Trucking Shipments

 

By BRAD FOSS
AP Business Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON— U.S. trucking industry shipments declined in February for the first time in five months, a trade group said Tuesday.

The American Trucking Associations said in a monthly report that its
seasonally adjusted truck tonnage index fell by 2.5 percent in February
versus the previous month.

We have several trips we’re committed to mid April then starting in late May we have about five or six trips for one account already planned for. While we were cleaning out the trailer in Maine our Maine dispatcher stops by to talk and a man walks up and wants to ship his car. Between our dispatcher and me, we convince him to use us to move his entire house and he wants me and Cindy to move him. Not bad for being in the right place at the right time.

The rest of the article is boring numbers about falling share earnings which they blame on slowing customer demand. Good thing there’s a driver shortage! It would be awful for all those drivers to be sitting around during a slowing of customer demand! Wait, that’s a different story.

“We continue to believe that motor carriers should expect modest growth
in volumes going forward and that the latest decrease should not alarm
the industry,” Bob Costello, the association’s chief economist, said in
a prepared statement.

In an interview, Costello said of industry wide conditions: “Essentially
what I’m hearing from members is that it’s not gangbusters, and it’s
not real bad. It sort of fits with the rest of the economy.”

Yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to do.