January truck tonnage droops in “snap back to reality”
ATA tracks 3.5% monthly drop in January after 1.2% rise in December.
Truck tonnage dropped 3.5% in January after increasing 1.2% in December, according to monthly trends tracked by the American Trucking Associations (ATA).
Compared with January 2023, tonnage fell 4.7%, which was the eleventh straight year-over-year decrease following December’s slump of 0.8% from a year earlier. The statistics come from ATA’s advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index.
“January’s data was a snap back to reality for anyone thinking the freight market was about to turn the corner,” ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said in a release. “Bad winter weather in January likely hurt volumes, not to mention sharp drops in a number of drivers of tonnage including retail sales, housing starts, and manufacturing output.”
The figures are a critical measure of the transportation sector since trucking represents 72.6% of tonnage carried by all modes of domestic freight transportation, including manufactured and retail goods. Trucks hauled 11.46 billion tons of freight in 2022, and motor carriers collected 80.7% of total revenue earned by all transport modes, ATA said.