Heavy Duty Trucking, November 2018
HDT NOVEMBER 2018 20 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM Hotline TRUCKINGS MOST RESPECTED BUSINESS REPORT What tonnage carloads and PMI tell us about freight hauling demand Last month we introduced the importance of corporate profits as a driver of equipment demand and the ability of industrial production statistics to help give us a view of where those profits were headed We also introduced the importance of railroad car loading reports as a real time read on industrial production trends This month given the uncertainty in the stock market about the staying power of this freight market were putting off the where are we in the cycle update and will instead talk more about the relationship between truck tonnage and railroad carloads as well as the importance of the Purchasing Managers Index PMI in helping forecast the trending direction of truck tonnage The American Trucking Associations monthly truck tonnage index non seasonally adjusted seems to have reasonably strong predictive value on a two to three month lag on where rail carloads may be headed This makes sense when you consider that truck related movements tend to represent final sales while rail carloads tend to be part of the intermediate manufacturing process However what we note in the graph on the next page is that truck tonnage growth tends to be a follower of changes in the Institute for Supply Managements PMI What can the ISMs monthly reports tell us about potential demand for truck Numbers behind the Jeffrey Kauffman Contributing Economic Analyst jkauffman@ truckinginfo com www PrestoneCommand com Since 1927 fleet owners have trusted Prestone to boost uptime by protecting engines regardless of their heavy duty demands For protection against heat cold and corrosion Prestone works BOOST UPTIME EVERY TIME
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