Thursday, December 15, 2011

Slight Drop in US Freight Statistics but Cargo Levels Still Rising Annually

Bureau of Transportation Index Shows Steady Progress
Shipping News Feature

US – Statistics from the Bureau of Transportation (BTS) released yesterday show that the quantity of cargo carried by ‘For Hire’ carriers dropped slightly in October, the first fall recorded in the past five months. The Freight Transportation Services Index is compiled from multimodal BTS statistics and measures the month-to-month changes in freight shipments in tonne/miles, which are then combined into one index.

BTS is a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration and the October fall showed a 0.2% decline against September figures however for the first 10 months of 2011, freight shipments measured by the index were up 2.3% overall. The figures are compiled from data processed by the BTS and include contracted out road haulage trucking statistics, inland waterways, pipelines and air freight.

Despite general doom and gloom the graph clearly shows that overall freight traffic has grown after the collapse in 2008 to just 3.5% below its all time high reached in January 2005 (113.3) standing as it now does at 109.4 and up 16% against the low reached in April 2009 when it bottomed out at 92.3.