FTR Trucking Conditions Index shows slight gain while remaining short of growth

The new edition of the Trucking Conditions Index, which was recently released by freight transportation consultancy FTR, showed continued signs of improvement, while again still falling short of growth.

According to FTR, a TCI reading above zero represents an adequate trucking environment, with readings above 10 indicating that volumes, prices and margin are in a good range for carriers.

And it explained that the TCI tracks the changes representing five major conditions in the U.S. truck market. These conditions include: freight volumes, freight rates, fleet capacity, fuel prices, and financing costs. Individual metrics are combined into a single index indicating the industry’s overall health. A positive score represents good, optimistic conditions. And a negative score represents bad, pessimistic conditions. Readings near zero are consistent with a neutral operating environment, and double-digit readings in either direction suggest significant operating changes are likely.

For October, the most recent month for which data is available, the TCI reading came in at 0.89, marking a slight improvement over September’s 0.42 reading.

The firm explained that it is still forecasting a mildly positive outlook for carriers’ market conditions through the forecast horizon, with the caveat that the lack if usual government data and revelations about the trajectory of the industrial sector over the last several years may soon shift the forecast.

“Our forecasting model relies heavily on government economic data, so the 43-day shutdown has hampered our analysis as the data flow slowly resumes,” said Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking. “The Federal Reserve recently disclosed that manufacturing output since 2022 has been substantially weaker than previous figures indicated, including in certain capital goods needed for future industrial production. Carriers might need to reduce capacity even more than we previously thought to achieve a reasonable level of utilization, but we still believe that the only true fix for the trucking industry’s doldrums is stronger and sustained freight demand.”