Headline data for the American Trucking Association (ATA) and the CASS Freight Index show that truck volumes marginally improved but show the year-over-year growth deep in contraction.

Analyst Opinion of Truck Transport

The CASS index is inclusive of rail, truck, and air shipments. The ATA truck index is inclusive of only trucking industry member movements (ATA's tonnage data is dominated by contract freight).

I put a heavier weight on the CASS index year-over-year which is consistent with rail and ocean freight. It is not logical that truck freight goes up when industrial production and ocean freight decline - not to mention the continuing effects of the trade war and the coronavirus shutdown.

Econintersect tries to validate truck data across data sources. It appears this month that the truck employment rate of growth continues to slow. Please note using BLS employment data in real-time is risky, as their data is normally backward adjusted (sometimes significantly). Additionally, Econintersect believes that the BLS is not capturing all truck employment.

ATA Trucking

ATA's May truck tonnage contracted 1 % and is down 9.6 % year-over-year.

Said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello:

While tonnage fell in May, even though other economic indicators like retail sales and housing starts rose, I'm not overly concerned. First, while down over 10 percent sequentially in April, truck tonnage did not fall as much as other economic indicators that month. This means that any rebound is tougher since tonnage didn't fall substantially to begin with. Second, there are indications that freight continues to improve as more and more states and localities lift lockdown restrictions.

While the overall economy will likely take more than a year to recover, assuming the pandemic doesn't spike again, the trucking industry could recover back to pre-COVID levels before many other industries because it hasn't fallen as much. As retail sales improve and housing starts recover, that will help trucking. The risk for trucking is that the virus surges again and places start to shut back down again.

ATA Truck tonnage this month

source: ATA

CASS FREIGHT INDEX REPORT

The following was reported by CASS:

As a measure of economic activity, Cass Freight Index shipment volumes dropped 23.6% vs. year-ago levels (Chart 1), slightly worse than the -22.7% y/y change in April. But the absolute index reading nudged up 1.6% sequentially from 0.923 to 0.938. This shows, in our view, a continued severe weakness in the U.S. economy that is counter to the stock market surge we saw from mid-May until the pull-back this week (giving some justification to the pull-back).

Source.