May truck tonnage sees gains, reports ATA

Following 14 consecutive months of declines through April, truck tonnage trends reversed course, with a May gain, according to data recently issued by the American Trucking Associations (ATA).

The ATA’s advanced Seasonally Adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index headed up 3.6% in May, following a 1% (downwardly revised from 1.2%) decrease in April, coming in at 115.9 (2015=100). May’s SA tonnage reading saw a 1.5% annual increase, after April’s 1.3% annual decrease, for its first annual gain in 15 months.

The ATA’s not seasonally-adjusted (NSA) index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by fleets before any seasonal adjustment and the metric ATA says fleets should benchmark their levels with, came in at 120.4, topping April by 7.1%. ATA said that this index is dominated by contract freight rather than spot market freight.

“May was the first month since February 2023 that tonnage increased both sequentially and from a year earlier,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello in a statement. “While there was clearly an increase in freight before the Memorial Day holiday, it is still too early to say whether this is the start of a long-awaited recovery in the truck freight market.”