In November, shipment volumes fell 3.3% They are are negative year-over-year for 12 consecutive months.
Unwelcome Change at Cass
On december 10, I received an email announcing "New Partnerships to Help Deliver More Accurate, Relevant Insights"
First, we’ve partnered with the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute to enhance the methodology used to produce our truckload and intermodal indexes, which are widely used barometers of transportation pricing.
We are also joining forces with financial services firm Stifel to provide monthly insights into the freight market dynamics that the data represents. Managing director and head of their well-known Global Transportation & Logistics Research practice, Dave Ross, will author our new Cass Transportation Indexes Report. The report, which will be an adaptation of the existing Cass Freight Index Report, will cover all of our indexes and, by design, be shorter and more consumable than the previous publication.
Hollow Version
The November Cass Transportation report, Flat is the New Up, is a hollow version of the former.
China - Gone
Global Reports - Gone
Cass to GDP Comparisons - Gone
Recession Comparisons - Gone
Most of the hard-hitting analysis is gone. Here are a couple of key snips from the new report.
Cass Freight Index - Shipments
Both the shipments and expenditures components of the Cass Freight Index remain down from their peaks in May and September of 2018, respectively, but both appear to be getting “less bad” with y/y comps not off as much as we saw in October. Over the coming months, expect y/y growth to flatten out, as the industrial economy is expected to bottom, while the consumer remains relatively healthy.
Shipment volumes, which have been negative y/y all year, fell 3.3% y/y in November. We’ve been talking for several quarters now about how we’re in another freight recession (the other being 2015-2016) during this long-tenured economic expansion in the U.S., which shows most clearly in the rail carload, LTL tonnage, and Cass shipment data. Some of this is due to an inventory destock (primarily at the retail level), while much is due to the softening industrial economy (where we believe inventories are still elevated). Moving into 2020, we expect volumes to flatten out but not surge much, and a turn to positive y/y comps in the shipments index could be seen as soon as January 2020.
more,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/flat-is-the-new-up-cass-shipping-index-down-12-straight-months-dRR-BG96ckiVTrGC4n4C5g
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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