The Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported this week that its Freight Transportation Services Index (TSI) was flat from November to December, snapping a steak of five straight months of sequential growth.
At 123.8, the Freight TSI was 30.9 percent above April 2009’s low of 94.6, which was during the depths of the recession. It was slightly below November’s 123.9, which is the historic peak for the Freight TSI, according to BTS.
According to BTS officials, the Freight TSI measures the month-to-month changes in freight shipments in ton-miles, which are then combined into one index. The index measures the output of the for-hire freight transportation industry and consists of data from for-hire trucking, rail, inland waterways, pipelines and air freight.
On a year-to-date basis, the Freight TSI was up 4.2 percent annually for all of 2014.
BTS said that the fourth quarter 2014 “represented the second consecutive quarter of rapid growth after stability in the first half of the yea,” adding that the third and fourth quarters of 2014 were the first two consecutive quarters with growth above 1.5 percent since the first quarter of 2010.