U.S. Bank: Freight payment index jumps 8.3% in Q3 2017

The increase in payments for third quarter 2017 was the largest quarterly gain since 2014, and was accompanied by a 3.3 percent increase in shipment volumes despite a difficult hurricane season, according to U.S. Bank.    Cargo transportation spending in the United States during the third quarter of 2017 grew 8.3 percent compared with the same 2016 period, according to a new freight payment index from U.S. Bank.
   U.S. Bank’s National Spend and National Shipment indices, made public in July, measure quantitative changes in shipment and spending activity based on aggregated data from 2010.
   The increase in payments for third quarter 2017 was the largest quarterly gain since 2014, and was accompanied by a 3.3 percent increase in shipment volumes despite a difficult hurricane season. U.S. Bank also noted an “acceleration in factory output as the U.S. dollar retreated from high levels and businesses began reinvesting in capital equipment.”
   Freight payment transactions, from which the data is gathered, are made on behalf of clients across a range of industries, including automotive, manufacturing, food and retail, said the firm. The data in the indices include regional and national breakdowns along with expert commentary from Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations (ATA).
   “Freight shipments are generally not uniform across the country,” said Costello. “That’s what makes the U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index so useful. It is regional and gives a good snapshot into the differences in economic climate from one end of the country to the other.”
   The Northeast region saw the biggest shipment index gain, at 10 percent, due to manufacturing activity and slightly higher housing starts compared to that in the second quarter of 2017, said U.S. Bank.
   Operations in the Southeast were impacted by Hurricane Irma, and spending rose nearly 5 percent as truck capacity tightened.
   The Midwest had the highest percentage growth in spend at 13.3 percent due to a rebound in general manufacturing activity, said U.S. Bank.
   “With U.S. Bank and its customers increasingly relying on big data to discover opportunities and make decisions, leveraging our robust data to assist our clients with these insights made a lot of sense,” said U.S. Bank Global Transportation General Manager John Hardin. “The relative changes in the U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index indicate trends in the transportation industry and the overall economy, which can be helpful to customers in benchmarking their performance.”