Transportation news: DOT reports Freight Transportation Services Index is down 0.6 percent
Staff -- Logistics Management, 7/10/2009
WASHINGTON—The United States Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported this week that its Freight Transportation Services Index (Freight TSI) was down in May from April.
At 94.0, the May Freight TSI dropped for the third straight month and is at its lowest level in 12 years, according to the BTS. And this decline represents the ninth one in the last ten months, with a cumulative 14.8 percent drop-off during that timeframe.
May’s number is the lowest the Freight TSI has been since June 1997, when it hit 92.4, and it is down 16.7 percent from its historic peak of 112.9 in May 2006. What’s more, the 14.8 percent year-over-year decline from May 2008 to May 2009 is the largest year-over-year decline for that timeframe in 20 years.
And the 6.3 percent decline over the first five months of 2009 is the largest in the last decade, said the BTS, topping a 5.3 percent dip that occurred over the first five months of 2000.
The Freight TSI measures the month-to-month changes in the output of services provided by the for-hire transportation industries, and it includes data from for-hire trucking, rail, inland waterways, pipelines, and air freight.
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