ATA trucking tonnage results from February show encouraging spike

Great results released by the American Trucking Association’s (ATA) show that the seasonally-adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index managed to reach an all-time high in last month (February 2016) seeing a spike of 7.2% following a 0.3% reduction in January.

In comparison with the same timeframe for 2015, the seasonally adjusted index shows plus 8.6% for February while the year-to-date comparison growth was plus 4.8%.

The index results are encouraging but as ATA chief economist explained there are some important factors to consider when gauging the figures:

“While it is nice to see a strong February, I caution everyone not to read too much into it. The strength was mainly due to a weaker than average January, including bad winter storms, thus there was some catch-up going on in February. Normally, fleets report large declines to ATA in February tonnage, in the range of 5.4% to 6.7% over the last three years. So, the small increase this year yielded a big seasonally adjusted gain. If March is strong, then I’ll get more excited."

We share that sentiment and will report the March results here on the Expedited Freight blog.