DOT Freight Index Falls in January
The Department of Transportation’s freight transportation services index for January fell 1.3% from a year earlier but rose from December, DOT said.
The January TSI fell to 96.6%, 0.4% higher than December's figure, which had fallen 4.1% from a year earlier, DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics said in its monthly report Wednesday.
The reading was the lowest for the month of January since 1997, when it was 89.9, and the year-to-year January downturn was an improvement over the 2008 to 2009 drop of 12.9%.
The index increased 3.3% over the last eight months, beginning in June. The freight index is down 14.3% in five years from January 2005 and 7.5% in 10 years from January 2000, DOT said.
The TSI is a seasonally adjusted monthly index measuring the output of services provided by the for-hire transportation industries, including railroad, air, truck, inland waterways, pipeline and local transit.
