The slump in freight demand could continue for months more, but analysts foresee an upward trend by the end of 2008. A bad housing market is a given, so the real wild cards are consumer spending and manufacturing.

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When economists, pundits and average citizens swap pronouncements and prognostications about whether the U.S. economy will slip into a recession, most trucking executives probably wonder what these people are thinking – or drinking. As far as the trucking industry is concerned, the recession is a reality and has been for quite a while.

“Trucking has been in a recession for five quarters,” says Donald Broughton, transportation analyst for Avondale Partners, an institutional research and investment banking firm. “We should have already seen an economic recession.”

But a recession in 2008 won’t necessarily have a big impact on trucking, says Eric Starks, president of freight transportation forecasting firm FTR Associates. “Most of the pain is out of the system. When you look historically, the trucking market usually takes the hit at the front end.”

Broughton and Starks are referring to the fact that trucking typically leads the economy into a recession and then leads out of it. That’s not to say trucking causes either the recession or recovery, of course. Rather, trucking is a leading indicator. A precise explanation of why this is true is elusive, but it might have something to do with lead times in the supply chain and the relative weight of goods.

“In theory, trucking should not be a leading indicator,” says Bob Costello, vice president and chief economist of the American Trucking Associations. Because trucking hauls freight throughout the supply chain, you would expect trucking volume to coincide with economic activity, not predict it, he says.