Can 18 wheelers be a sign of the economy?

May 13, 2009 – 9:09 pm – No Comment

Here’s some interesting news:

A good measure of the economy is to count the number of 18 wheelers on the road.

Trucks carry all kinds of manufactured goods around the country. Everything from food to washing machines to soap is carried across the country in 18 wheelers. So, it can be said that you can measure how much people are buying by how many trucks are on the roads.

When there are more trucks on the road, customers are buying more, assembly lines are running, and trucks are hauling those goods from point “A” to point “B.”

The bad news is that it seems like trucks aren’t carrying enough from place to place to indicate a fast recovery, or if a recovery will even happen soon.

There was a slowdown in consumer spending and slow manufacturing activities in the first quarter of this year, as well as almost all of 2008. The slow down has affected truckers too. In the first quarter of this year, almost 480 trucking companies have disappeared.

While that is less than 1% of the country’s total freight capacity, between last years’ 3,000 trucking companies going under, 7 out of every 100 trucks have been taken off the road. Until the economy starts to pick up, it can be expected that more trucking companies will go under.

However, if there is a silver lining; gas prices are nearly half the price that they were a year ago. This means that some truckers are able to take home more pay for their trips rather than spending it on gas. Or the trucking companies can pass those savings onto consumers. The savings could lead to more purchases… I have yet to see a great reduction in the cost of goods though. I mean, milk is much cheaper than it was a year ago, but everything else is still rising it seems to me.

I don’t suppose that I travel the interstates enough, because the last time I took a road trip down I-40, there were plenty of 18 wheelers. On a Saturday morning in February, traveling from Dallas to Memphis, the trucks on the road easily outnumbered the passenger vehicles 2 to 1.