Truck Freight Tonnage Inches Up 0.6% in July
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Freight tonnage in July showed an increase sequentially but a decrease from the prior year, reported Aug. 19.
The ATA For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 0.6% to 113.7 from 113 reported in June, but the index also decreased 0.1% from 2024. The not seasonally adjusted index increased 1.9% sequentially to 116.8. It also was unchanged year to date.
“ sequentially but did not erase the 0.7% decline in June,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “Since March, truck tonnage has been in a tight range. The good news is truck freight volumes haven’t fallen much over that period, but we are not seeing many increases, either.
“In July, there were mixed drivers of truck tonnage with housing starts and retail sales up, while manufacturing output was flat to down depending on the metric.”
ATA calculates its monthly tonnage index by surveying its membership. The feedback primarily comes from contract freight rather than spot market freight. In calculating the index, 100 represents the year 2015.
(American Trucking Associations)
“Typically we see, across quarters and across years, a variability,” said Jonathan Phares, assistant professor of supply chain management at Iowa State University. “However, this year has been very muted and the freight highs have been lower than they have been in several years in the past, whereas the lows are rather consistent more with where they have been in the past couple years.”
Phares added that conditions may be trending closer to a historic normal despite the year-over-year loss. He has even heard from industry contacts who feel things have been going pretty well but cautioned that companies may be getting too comfortable with what’s going on. President Donald Trump has pushed tariffs to renegotiate trade deals, he pointed out, and that could lead to a decline in consumer confidence, imports, freight tonnage and rates for the next year or two.
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“I think that the tariffs have had kind of an interesting effect,” Phares said. “Some of those tariffs did go into place, and so I think that can account for some of the reduction in the peaks that we’ve seen in different months this year. But I’m wondering, if the tariff battles continue, and threats of tariffs continue, if we’re seeing shippers become a bit numb to those threats.”
The found that July shipments decreased 6.9% year over year to 1.033 from 1.110, and declined 1.8% sequentially from 1.052 reported in June. The Logistics Managers’ Index registered 59.2 for July compared with 60.7 the previous month. This represented a moderate rate of expansion that is disproportionately driven by smaller firms.
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“July was what you call a good month at the ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles, because people were front-running the tariff deadline of August,” said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. “So as usual, it started to pick up in late June and kept on going in July. That doesn’t mean that people are buying that stuff.”
Dhawan added that a lot of that front-loaded cargo ended up at warehouses or stayed at the ports instead of being moved by trucks. This resulted in a disconnect between what the ports have been reporting and what is being translated into overall freight tonnage.
“That said, on the economy side, things are mixed when it comes to spending,” Dhawan said. “People spend on things they want to spend, but they also economize, which usually shows you the stress that they’re feeling on their finances, which is a function of lack of white-collar job growth.”
Dhawan suggested his triangle-of-money concept to get a better understanding of the job market over just looking at unemployment statistics. The approach looks at tax collections with the aim of forming a complete picture of job quality and purchasing power.
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“So, if you look at the Social Security tax collections, they were running at 9% two years ago and they were practically flat in the last few months,” Dhawan said. “So that tells you that job growth is not there.”
Dhawan noted that this is especially an issue for young adults and recent graduates who have had a tough time finding something that pays the bills over the past six months. This also had the added impact of signaling to the older adults in their life that conditions are tight.
“There is this talk about the tariffs will create inflation,” Dhawan said. “It’ll take a lot of effort because, in the CPI index, two-thirds of the stuff in there is services and they’re exempt from tariffs. Then when it comes to gasoline, and most of the food, that’s also exempt from tariffs, so it’s going to take a very outrageous amount of price increases.”
