Transportation news: DOT reports Freight Transportation Services Index is down 0.5 percent from August to September
Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/12/2009
WASHINGTON Following three consecutive months of growth, the United States Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported today that its Freight Transportation Services Index (Freight TSI) declined 0.5 percent from August to September.
The BTS said that the Freight TSI has been down in ten of the last 14 months and five of nine months in 2009. From May to August of this year, the Freight TSI went four straight months without a decline (increasing a cumulative 2.8 percent) after falling in nine of the previous 12 months, according to the BTS. And the May-August stretch was the first four-month period without a decline in the index since 2002.
The September Freight TSI at 95.7 is below August's 96.2 and is 2.3 percent of the recent low of 93.5 percent from May, when the Freight TSI was at its lowest level since June 1997. This is the lowest September tally since September 1996, which came in at 87.7. On an annual basis, the Freight TSI is down 9.9 percent compared to September 2008, which is the largest September-to-September decline in the 20-year existence of the Freight TSI.
BTS officials said the Freight TSI is down 15.2 percent from its historic peak of 112.9 in May 2006. Over the first nine months of the year, the Freight TSI is down 4.6 percent, marking the largest January-September decline since a 5.9 percent dip in 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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