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Dayton
Business Journal...
Trucking
index slips as economy slows
by Joe Cogliano
Monday, June 27, 2011
The
trucking industry slipped in May,
reflecting a shaky economic recovery.
On
Monday, the American Trucking
Associations’ announced its advance seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck
Tonnage
Index dropped 2.3 percent in May. The figure was a 2.7 percent increase
compared with the same month last year, but marked the smallest
year-over-year
gain since February 2010.
“Truck
tonnage over the last four months
shows that the economy definitely hit a soft patch this spring,” said
Bob
Costello, ATA chief economist, in a statement. “With our index falling
in three
of the last four months ... it is clear why there is some renewed
anxiety over
the economic recovery.”
However,
Costello added that he is
cautiously optimistic that freight volumes will improve in the second
half of
the year along with economic activity.
“With
oil prices falling and some of
the Japan-related auto supply problems ending, I believe this was a
soft patch
and not a slide back into recession, and we should see better, but not
great,
economic activity in the months ahead,” he said.
Trucking
serves as a barometer of the
U.S. economy, representing 67.2% of tonnage carried by all modes of
domestic
freight transportation, including manufactured and retail goods. Trucks
hauled
9 billion tons of freight in 2010. Motor carriers collected $563.4
billion, or
81.2 percent of total revenue earned by all transport modes.
The
Dayton region is a hotbed of
trucking activity, sitting at the crossroads of Interstates 70 and 75,
and the
health of the industry has a significant impact on the Dayton region’s
economy.
Dayton
Freight Lines Inc. , one of the
largest locally-based trucking companies, employs 300 between its
Vandalia
headquarters and Huber Heights service center. Company-wide, it has
about 2,500
workers. The firm expects sales to grow 10 percent this year to $250
million
and says it will hire about 30 new employees.
Read
the rest of the story at Dayton
Business Journal
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