Freight shipments and expenditures see declines in August, reports Cass Freight Index

Freight shipments and expenditures readings saw declines in August, according to the new edition of the Cass Freight Index, which was recently issued by Cass Information Systems. 

Many freight transportation and logistics executives and analysts consider the Cass Freight Index to be the most accurate barometer of freight volumes and market conditions, with many analysts noting that the Cass Freight Index sometimes leads the American Trucking Associations (ATA) tonnage index at turning points, which lends to the value of the Cass Freight Index.

What’s more, the Cass Transportation Index accurately measure changes in North American freight activity and costs based on $36 billion in paid freight expenses for the Cass customer base of hundreds of large shippers. 

The August shipments reading, at 1.017, fell 9.3% annually and was down 1.5% compared to July. Shipments fell 1.5% on a seasonally-adjusted (SA) basis, from July to August, and were down 11.0% on a two-year stacked change basis.

“The long freight downturn persists, though we note that truckload freight is up in the Cass data, while LTL has declined significantly,” wrote Tim Denoyer, the report’s author and ACT Research vice president and senior analyst, in the report. “Container and intermodal volumes were also up from year-ago levels in August (as a reminder, the dataset for the Cass Freight Index contains North American domestic freight only). After rising 13% in 2021 and 0.6% in 2022, the index declined 5.5% in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024, and is trending toward another considerable decline in 2025. In September, the shipments component of the Cass Freight Index would decline 7% y/y on the normal seasonal pattern.”

And the August expenditures reading, at 3.135, fell 0.4% annually and were down 2.8%, from July to August. Expenditures decreased 1.4% on a month-to-month SA basis and were down 9.4% on a two-year stacked change basis.  

“The flattish results of the past two months were a combination of lower shipment volumes and higher rates,” wrote Denoyer. “We infer that rates (or more specifically, the average cost of a shipment) rose 9.8% annually, largely due to the mix shift from LTL to truckload, similar to the past several months.