Are We There Yet?

This Editorial appears in the March 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

For the first time since the recession cut a huge hole in the center of the nation’s economic activity, some analysts are beginning to report that the worst may be over.

While they may be a tad premature, we’re hopeful these analysts aren’t wrong, and there is definitely some evidence to support their claims.

The Commerce Department announced last week that durable goods orders in February unexpectedly rose 3.4%, after six straight monthly declines. Economists had expected orders for durables — products designed to last at least three years — to fall 2% for the month.

Also, new-home sales rose 4.7% during February, the first increase in seven months. Again, analysts had expected another decline in sales. And mortgage applications rose, a sign that life may be re-animating the housing market.

Late last week, American Trucking Associations reported that freight volume in February rose 1.7% from an extremely low level in January.

Not that all of this news was without its drawbacks. For instance, while new-home sales rose, the median price of those sales declined 18.1% from year-earlier levels. And freight volumes, while they rose from the poor level of January, were actually 9.2% below the volumes recorded in February 2008.

Still, analysts are looking mainly for evidence that the worst is over, not that good times have returned. And there is some cause for hope.

Discussions with some fleet executives indicate that freight activity in March appeared to pick up, although these officials were reluctant to declare that the freight drought was over.

We’re heartened by the federal appeals court decision to support ATA’s challenge to unreasonable portions of the plan by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to improve air quality at their facilities.

The court rightly found, as we had claimed, that the ban on owner-operators at the Port of Los Angeles was illegal and that Long Beach’s demands for detailed financial data from drayage operators and for preference to hire certain drivers likely were illegal.

As we’ve said all along, ATA supports most of the ports’ clean-air program, including requiring newer trucks and a container fee to raise money to help drayers get those trucks.

But we object to the unreasonable portions of the plan, and the appeals court has affirmed our position.