Truck tonnage is up 3.4% from a year ago; shipment volumes are down 4.1%; truckload pricing has firmed over the past three months.
The quantity of freight changing hands. Tonnage and shipment counts turn months before broad output does, which is what makes them worth watching.
ATA Truck Tonnage Index, seasonally adjusted. +3.4% yr/yr
When expenditures climb while shipments soften, the cost of moving each load is rising.
Intermodal tracks imported goods moving inland; carloads track bulk industry.
The government's combined index of for-hire freight across all modes, indexed to 2000 = 100.
The official price of moving freight, split into the two halves of the long-haul market: full truckloads and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments that share a trailer. Both come straight from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and update every month.
Change in the producer price index for each trucking segment over one month, three months, and one year. These indexes include fuel surcharges, so they firm when diesel is high.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index, via FRED. Updates monthly.
Producer price index for the long-distance trucking market. Truckload is the contract market's broad price gauge; LTL covers shared-trailer freight.
Fuel is the largest variable cost a carrier carries. Diesel feeds straight into rates through fuel surcharges, so it sets the floor under the whole market.
+4.8% wk/wk, +27.6% yr/yr. Updated weekly by the EIA.
Estimate the per-mile fuel surcharge from today's diesel price.
Freight is one of the earliest reads on the real economy. Goods get booked, moved, and paid for before they show up in sales, earnings, or GDP.
A retailer orders before it sells; a factory ships parts before it builds. Because freight sits at the front of that chain, a sustained turn in tonnage or shipment counts tends to show up months ahead of the headline numbers. Watching it is like watching the economy's order book rather than its receipts.
Cass Information Systems processes a large share of the freight invoices in North America. Its shipments index counts how many loads moved; its expenditures index sums what shippers paid. When expenditures rise faster than shipments, the price per load is climbing, a sign capacity is tightening.
Contract rates are locked in for months; spot rates are booked load by load. In a soft market spot trades well below contract. As freight tightens, spot rises first and closes the gap, then pushes above contract. That crossover is the clearest early sign carriers are regaining pricing power.
Trucks move the large majority of domestic freight by value, so the tonnage index is a broad proxy for goods activity. It is seasonally adjusted, so a move up or down reflects real change rather than the calendar. Read it alongside rates: rising tonnage with rising rates is genuine strength.
Fuel is a carrier's biggest variable cost. Most freight contracts add a fuel surcharge pegged to the EIA's weekly diesel average, so when diesel moves, freight bills move within days. It is the fastest mechanical link between energy markets and the cost of everything that ships.
The headline reading blends year-over-year truck tonnage, Cass shipments, and the freight services index with the truckload price trend and the behaviour of spot rates. Volume carries the cycle; rates confirm the turn. No single series moves the needle on its own, which keeps the signal from chasing noise.
A periodic readout of where freight is heading: the barometer reading, what is driving it, and the numbers that moved. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
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The headline freight signal is our own simple, transparent composite of several public indicators. It is an interpretive summary, not a forecast, a guarantee, or a recommendation. It does not predict future market conditions, rates, or prices, and it should not be treated as a trading signal or as a basis for commercial commitments.
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Put your brand in front of the people who move the freight economy. Freight Barometer is read by carriers, brokers, shippers, 3PLs, lenders, and analysts who come here to take the temperature of the market. Here is the audience and the reach.
Freight Barometer is a daily-updated economic dashboard that distils truck tonnage, rail volumes, shipment and expenditure indexes, trucking prices, and diesel costs into a single freight cycle signal. It is a focused, high-intent environment. People do not arrive here by accident; they come looking for a read on the freight economy, which means the audience is precisely the decision-making, budget-holding professional that freight, logistics, equipment, fuel, insurance, and financial-services advertisers most want to reach.
The audience skews heavily toward industry insiders: owner-operators and fleet managers checking where rates are heading, brokers and 3PLs gauging capacity, shippers planning budgets, equipment and technology vendors tracking the cycle, and the lenders, insurers, and analysts who underwrite and forecast the sector. This is a business-to-business readership with real purchasing authority, not casual consumer traffic, so a placement here reaches buyers rather than browsers.
We keep the page deliberately clean, which makes the advertising that does appear more visible and more valued. Rather than burying brands in clutter, the site carries a small number of well-placed units, the industry-standard 970x90 billboard, 728x90 leaderboard, and 300x250 rectangle, positioned within the natural flow of the content where engaged readers actually look. Lower ad density means higher share of attention for each advertiser, and it protects the reading experience that keeps the audience coming back.
Engagement is strong for a data site. Visitors view multiple sections per visit and spend real time reading, which means repeat impressions and genuine dwell time rather than a quick bounce. Because the underlying data refreshes continuously, the audience returns regularly to check the latest reading, giving advertisers a recurring, habitual touchpoint with the same high-value professionals week after week.
Placements are flexible. We can support fixed-position brand sponsorships, share-of-voice rotations across the standard banner sizes, and category exclusivity for advertisers who want to own their vertical on the page. Whether you are launching a product to the freight market, building brand awareness with shippers and carriers, or driving qualified traffic to your own site, we can structure something that fits your goal and budget.
We also value relevance and trust. Freight Barometer is an independent editorial dashboard, and we are selective about advertising so that what appears alongside the data is credible and appropriate for a professional freight audience. That selectivity is part of what makes the inventory worth buying: your brand sits in a respected, uncluttered context rather than a race-to-the-bottom ad environment.
To request the current media kit, rate card, and availability, send a note using the form below and tell us a little about what you would like to promote. We will follow up with placement options, pricing, and the next available start date. We read every enquiry personally and aim to reply promptly.
Questions, corrections, or feedback on the data? Send us a note and we will get back to you.