Month-to-month freight index up 0.5% in February, year-to-year up 3.6%

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Freight Tsi

The amount of freight carried by the for-hire transportation industry rose 0.5 percent in February from January, rising after a one-month decline, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ Freight Transportation Services Index released Wednesday, April 11.

BTS, a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, reported that shipments in February were at the second-highest level since the early recession month of April 2008 despite the 3.0 percent decline from December 2011 (113.7), which was the highest level in the 22-year history of the series.

Freight shipments in February rose 16.9 percent from the recent low in April 2009 during the recession (94.3) when freight shipments were at their lowest level since June 1997 (92.3). Freight shipments are up 1.8 percent in the five years from February 2007 and up 11.1 percent in the 10 years from February 2002 despite declines in recent years.

February freight shipments rose 3.6 percent from February 2011 and 10.5 percent from February 2009 but remain below the level of February 2008 (111.6).

The Freight TSI measures the output of the for-hire freight transportation industry and consists of data from for-hire trucking, rail, inland waterways, pipelines and air freight. It includes historic data from 1990 to the present. The baseline year is 2000.