LMI shows logistics expansion continues at slower pace amid falling transportation and warehousing costs

Despite a sequential decline, the logistics sector continued to show growth in September, according to the recently-released Logistics Managers' Index (LMI).

The monthly LMI is a joint project among researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, University of Nevada, Reno, Florida Atlantic University, and Rutgers University, and also receives support by Council of Supply Management Professionals (CSCMP). CSCMP. The LMI is written by Zac Rogers Ph.D., Steven Carnovale Ph.D., Shen Yeniyurt Ph.D., Ron Lembke Ph.D., and Dale Rogers Ph.D.

The report’s authors explained that the LMI score, or reading, is based on eight “unique components” within the logistics sector, including: inventory levels and costs, warehousing capacity, utilization and prices and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices.

The September reading, at 57.4 (a reading above 50 indicates growth is occurring), trailed August’s 59.3 by 1.9%, coming in at its lowest level since March and its second-lowest this year—and it is the seventh consecutive month the LMI reading has been below the all-time overall average of 61.5. The report explained that this slowdown was paced by a declining rate of growth for its sub-metrics, including: Transportation Utilization down 4.7%, to 50.0, its lowest reading for the month of September, which the report said is “generally a busy season in the freight market, with the reading well below the eight-year September average of 65.1; Transportation Prices were off 1.9%, to 54.2; Transportation Capacity down 2.2%, to 55.1.

In assessing these metrics, the report’s authors explained that while Transportation Prices decreased, they are still expanding, albeit slowly, representing the lowest rate of growth since April 2024, while also noting that September pricing is usually strong, due to shipments of holiday merchandise, but was not the case in September 2025.

September Inventory Level Expansion, at 55.2, was down 3.1%, while Inventory Costs were still elevated, falling 3.7%, to 75.5. For warehousing, Warehousing prices dipped 6.3%, to 66.0, the largest drop for any LMI sub-index but still at a robust rate of expansion and the second-lowest reading of 2025 and currently ahead of the 65.2 average in 2024. Warehousing capacity rose 1.1%, to 51.6, and Warehousing Utilization, at 65.3, rose 3.2%.

“This is the second-lowest reading this year, only behind March, and the reason March was low is because of the big pull-forward of inventories that happened at the beginning of the year,” said Dr. Zac Rogers at last week’s CSCMP EDGE annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland. “We saw a really funny thing happen last year, which is inventories really started coming in the second half of December. Inventory is not supposed to show up at the end of December. It's supposed to leave at the end of December. But it started showing up because tariffs came through January, February and then the end of March, it started to slow down. We saw a similar slowdown, I think in September, although there are some different characteristics to it.”

While various costs and price metrics were down in September, Rogers pointed out that none of them contracted, making the case that a reading can see a sequential decline and remain on the right side of growth, with the biggest example of that being the 6.3% Warehousing Prices decline.

“If we look at what happened in September, we can see that inventories sort of slowed down,” he said. “They were really coming in at a fast rate. All through the summer, they've slowed down a bit, and because of that, all the associated costs have dropped. Inventory costs are down about three and a half points, whereas in price is down 6.3 and transportation is down, too.

Anything that's above 60 is a pretty robust rate of growth. Everything over 70 is a significant rate of growth. So, we're slowing down, but we're slowing down in the way where it's like, we were going really fast and it was followed by a sharp decline.”