Truckload rates up 3.5% in May

Investment firm Avondale Partners reiterated its projection that truckload pricing will increase 4%-9% in 2015 despite a slight deceleration in spot rate growth.    Truckload rates increased 3.5 percent in May 2015 compared to May 2014, according to the latest Cass Truckload Linehaul Index. Cass Information Systems Inc., a transportation intelligence analyst, said the May reading represented a 9.5 percent increase compared with May of 2013.
   The company attributed the continued growth in rates to continued growth in demand and capacity remaining “extraordinarily” tight. Cass expects it will “continue to see contract rate increases filter into our index at higher levels.”
   Year-over-year truckload rates in April and March increased 3.8 percent and 5.1 percent, respectively, with the March reading representing an all-time high for the index.
   Investment firm Avondale Partners said of the May index reading, “We would point out that contract pricing (which applies to 95+ percent of the public carriers’ freight) has been accelerating after a drawn-out bid season last year.
   “As a result, although spot market pricing has decelerated somewhat (it remains strong), we see TL pricing increasing between 4% and 9% in 2015, depending on how much rate increase each carrier was successful in obtaining in 2014 and when those rate increases were achieved,” added Avondale. “It is our sense that contracts settled later in 2014 were at ever higher rates.”