Headline data for truck shipments was mixed - with Cass saying the growth rate marginally contracted year-over-year whilst the ATA shows year-over-year growth rate is positive.

Analyst Opinion of Truck Transport

I tend to put a heavier weight on the CASS index which this month contracted marginally year-over-year. On the other hand, ATA index strongly improved.

Econintersect tries to validate truck data across data sources. It appears this month that jobs growth says the trucking industry employment levels rate of growth slightly improved. Please note using BLS employment data in real time is risky, as their data is normally backward adjusted (sometimes significantly).

ATA Trucking

American Trucking Associations' advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 2.3% in January after falling 1% in December.

Said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello:

After monthly declines in both November and December, tonnage snapped back in January. I was very pleased to see this rebound. But we should expect some moderation in tonnage this year as most of the key sectors that generate truck freight tonnage are expected to decelerate.

ATA Truck tonnage this month

Compared with January 2018, the SA index increased 5.5%. In 2018, the index increased 6.7% over 2017, which was the largest annual gain since 1998.

source: ATA

CASS FREIGHT INDEX REPORT

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As we explained last month—and for reasons outlined later in this report—we are not yet alarmed about the volume of shipments being slightly negative (now for the second month in a row) after being positive for 24 months in a row (-0.3% in the month of January, -0.8% in the month of December), in part because December 2017 and January 2018 were all-time highs for those months, and in part because of the stabilizing patterns we see in almost all of the underlying freight flows.

Source.