The monthly Cass freight index showed that October’s freight volumes grew 2.2% over the same month last year, while shippers’ spending increased by 16.1%.
The index covers all modes of freight transportation; it measures trends in North American shipping activity, based on the amounts spent on freight by more than a hundred of America’s largest shippers.
The figures seem to show that attempts by carriers to increase freight rates and recover increases in operating costs appear to be effective. This means that the weight of a shipment, averaged across all modes, has risen about 1%, year-over-year, but the cost of transporting that average shipment has escalated dramatically.