DOT Freight Index Shows Second Straight Monthly Gain
The Department of Transportation’s freight transportation services index fell in August from a year ago but showed a second straight month-to-month improvement, DOT said Thursday.
The 10.9% decline in the freight index from August 2008 was the largest August-to-August decline in the 20 years in which the TSI has been calculated, but it rose 0.7% from July, following July’s 1.6% gain from June.
The index has now gone four consecutive months without a monthly downturn after declining in nine of the previous 12 months, marking the first four-month period without a decline since 2002, DOT said.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement that the monthly improvement is “evidence that America is moving towards economic recovery” and that “economic data like this should give us hope that our worst days are behind us.”
The freight TSI is 14.8% below its historic peak of 112.9 set in May 2006, with the year 2000 as a baseline level of 100.
August’s 96.2 reading is a 2.7% increase from the recent low of 93.6 in April, when the index was at its lowest level in 12 years.
The freight 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.
