December Truck Tonnage Plummets 14.1%

By Rip Watson, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Feb. 2 print edition of Transport Topics.

December truck tonnage plummeted 14.1% from year-earlier levels and 11.1% from November, the worst freight performance in more than a decade.

American Trucking Associations said the seasonally adjusted index fell to 98.3, making it the greatest sequential monthly decline since April 1994, when a Teamsters strike crippled freight movement.

The year-to-year drop in December was the largest since 1996 and pushed the index to its lowest level since December 2000. For the entire fourth quarter of 2008, tonnage was down 6% from year-earlier levels.

“Motor carrier freight is a reflection of the tangible-goods economy, and December’s numbers leave no doubt that the United States is in the worst recession in decades,” said Bob Costello, ATA’s chief economist. “It is likely truck tonnage will not improve much before the third quarter of this year. The economy is expected to contract through the first half of 2009 and then only grow slightly through the end of the year.”

Durable goods orders fell 2.6%, the U.S. Census Bureau reported on Jan. 29. The Institute for Supply Management reported that its December index of manufacturing activity plummeted to 32.4, the lowest level since 1980, and orders for manufactured products in that month fell 50%.

Dry-van truckload fleets were hit especially hard, with a 17% drop in their freight volume between June and November, which is the latest available information, Costello said.

“Demand, whether measured by loads or tonnage, is falling much faster at this point than the supply of trucks,” he said.

Trends in the spot trucking market, as reflected by TransCore’s Freight Services load-matching business, are moving in the same direction as ATA’s tonnage index.

Load volume fell 46% in December from that month in 2007, and January loads fell even further — about 59%. However, David Schrader, a TransCore senior vice president, said the extent of the decline was affected by high volumes in January 2008.

December’s weak performance is generating concern about a new wave of bankruptcies. Just 375 fleets with more than five trucks sought bankruptcy protection last quarter as falling fuel prices helped carriers, according to Avondale Partners, compared with a total of 2,690 in the first nine months of 2008.

Stephen Russell, Celadon Group’s chief executive officer, told TT on Jan. 27 that he expected the pace of bankruptcies to increase because some financially strapped fleets won’t be able to afford the roughly $1,800 per truck for annual renewals of license plates and other fees.

Banks won’t lend money to fleets to pay those fees, he said, noting the already tight credit markets.

Financially weak fleets with minimal insurance also pose risks to brokers and shippers because plaintiffs’ lawyers can sue them if a shaky fleet has an accident and doesn’t have adequate coverage.

Russell said that Continental Express Inc., whose rolling stock Celadon purchased in December for $24.1 million, probably would have gone out of business in January if the assets weren’t purchased.

In the interview, Russell attributed the broad-based worldwide economic downturn to what he termed “the Lehman Brothers” factor.

Russell said the failure of Lehman Brothers, the investment banking firm that filed for bankruptcy in October with $613 billion in debt, triggered widespread fear in financial markets that hasn’t abated.

An Ontario Trucking Association survey also painted a bleak picture.

“Trucking feels every jolt to the economy,” said OTA president David Bradley. “Most trucking companies, and certainly those who will survive this difficult period, are taking the actions they can and structuring themselves to weather this storm.”

OTA’s survey found that fleets expect at least six more months of freight recession, including volume declines and freight imbalances that harm productivity.

More than half of the surveyed fleets said they were pessimistic about the next three months, compared with 34% in a fourth-quarter survey. Nearly three in four respondents said their volumes were falling.

Recent fourth-quarter earnings reports from publicly traded fleets illustrated how the quarter fell apart month-by-month from a volume perspective.

Con-way Inc. said its less-than-truckload tonnage fell 3.8%, 9.1% and 10.6% in October, November and December, respectively.

Con-way’s tonnage decline was even greater in January, said Stephens Inc. analyst Thom Albrecht and Robert W. Baird analyst Jon Langenfeld.

The trend also was sour for other carriers.

For Werner Enterprises Inc. and Heartland Express from the truckload side, the trend was the same in their businesses.

“The overall freight market became increasingly challenging as each month progressed from mid-September to December 2008,” Werner said in a Jan. 22 statement, which included a 7% decline in revenue.