Here’s a chart making the rounds. What does it say? 
Cass Freight Indexes
Please consider The Cass Freight Index®
Since 1995, the Cass Freight Index® has been a trusted measure of the North American freight market. Our monthly data and the Cass Transportation Index Report provide valuable insight into freight trends as they relate to other economic and supply chain indicators and the overall economy.
Data within the Index includes all domestic freight modes and is derived from 36 million invoices and $36 billion in spend processed by Cass annually on behalf of its client base of hundreds of large shippers. These companies represent a broad sampling of industries including consumer packaged goods, food, automotive, chemical, medical/pharma, OEM, retail and heavy equipment. Annual freight volume per organization ranges from $40 million to over $2 billion. The diversity of shippers and aggregate volume provide a statistically valid representation of North American shipping activity.
The Cass shipments index is a measure of the number of intra-continental freight shipments across North America, for everything from raw materials to finished goods. All domestic modes are included, with truckload moves accounting for more than 50% of shipments and LTL about 25%.
The expenditures index measures the total dollars spent on freight transportation and includes both contract and spot market rates.
What Does the Chart Say?
None of the above. At lease a half-dozen people on X analyzed the above chart and made claims that should not be made, at least based off that chart.
About the only use for NSA data is year-over-year comparisons.
Cass Freight Index Shipments and Expenditures Year-Over-Year
Year-Over-Year Shipments and Expenditures
- Shipments: -7.46 percent
- Expenditures: -0.60 percent
Let’s hone in on that.
Cass Freight Index Shipments and Expenditures Year-Over-Year Details
Now we can make some legitimate weakness observations.
Year-over-year shipments have been every month starting February 2023. That’s 35 straight months of negative year-over-year declines in shipments.
Meanwhile, the trend in expenditures was getting better from November 2023 and went positive in April of 2025.
This is one heck of a divergence.
Cass Freight Index Shipment Detail Stacked
2-year stacked shipments have been negative ever since March of 2023. That’s 34 straight months.
Cass Freight Index Expenditures Detail Stacked
2-year stacked expenditures have been negative ever since June of 2023. That’s 31 straight months.
However, the slope is up.
Let’s now discuss the key seasonally-adjusted chart we should have started with.
Cass Freight Index Shipments Seasonally Adjusted
It turns out the initial claims about weakness were valid after all.
That’s because the seasonally adjusted month-over-month weakness (not every month) lasted for years.
For example, seasonally-adjusted month-over-month shipments were negative 16 out of the last 22 months.
In turn, that’s what kept year-over-year NSA shipments negative for 35 straight months.
If anything, the seasonally adjusted chart looks even worse than the NSA chart. That’s because some of the steep rebounds on the NSA chart vanish when adjusted.
But we could not surmise any of that without understanding the seasonal adjustments.
Seasonally Adjusted Shipment Detail
What Happened to Shipments?
- Steep plunge in Covid
- Steep rebound from Covid
- Sideways consolidation at good to very good levels from October 2020 until a near double-top peak at 1.24 in August of 2022.
- From August 2022 it has been mostly downhill with tiny bounces
That is the clearest chart yet of what’s going on. And you cannot see that with NSA data because the NSA rebounds look much stronger than they are.
Seasonally Adjusted Expenditures Detail
Seasonally adjusted expenditures have been mostly flat since January of 2024.
Cass commented “The flattish results of the past few months were a combination of lower shipments and higher rates. With shipments down considerably more than overall spending, we can infer higher freight costs.”
However, it’s more than a few months. For two years, expenditures have been flat despite declining shipments and falling diesel prices.
If anything, the divergence hints at a bit of stagflation. It also says shippers will not ship at a loss. If they do, they soon go out of business.
Looking Ahead
Cass: “While the soft volume environment persists, after considerable destocking in Q4’25, we think the Supreme Court decision on IEEPA tariffs could provide a positive catalyst for freight demand.”
The Cass observation on the IEEPA tariffs seems reasonable, at first glance, especially if the Court orders refunds.
But Trump is likely to respond with other tariffs, and the Court may not order refunds.
Nonetheless, let’s assume tariff cancellation and refunds. What then?
The SA shipments chart shows tariff front-running for two months barely made a dent in shipments. So while we may get a bounce, the better question is how long.
IEEPA tariff cancellation will not impact steel, aluminum, and other goods used as manufacturing inputs.
The labor market is anemic. It’s only high-end spending and AI that’s realistically keeping the economy afloat.
All of those will be more important than the tariff decision.
The SA shipments chart looks horrible, and there is no clear reason to believe a change is on the horizon.
But as they say, making predictions is difficult, especially about the future.
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I am still 75-25. Nothing has changed.
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I doubt the Supreme Court takes Trump’s Canada tariff threat into consideration. But I hope they do. It’s relevant.
Regardless, if a full-blown trade war with Canada erupts, it will not be good for shipping or the economy.
Are these metrics as useful as they used to be?
Personally, I’ve cut the amount of physical goods I buy by a huge margin, especially post-Covid. If that’s even partially true at scale, how much of the decline in truck shipping is a signal of genuine economic slowdown, and how much is simply a structural shift in what people consume?
Services now make up roughly 70% of US GDP, so metrics like ISM Services feel increasingly important — and that index has remained above 50 for most of the past year.
Of course nobody is suggesting using a metric in isolation but just a comment that in your “basket of metrics” may be shipping should be less weighted.
But ATA Shipments which measures domestic truck freight tonnage and excludes
international shipping legs shows a stabilization which could mean that the Cass index drop could be attributed to a big drop in imports and less to internal freight transport weakness.
ATA Truck Tonnage Index Rose 0.4% in December | American Trucking Associations
An expansionary recession. Definitely a new world order.
Gold $5,090 & Silver $108.
Today yer way behind
Oh well. The EU has signed a trade deal with Latin America and now India. How’s that for the art of the deal….
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/27/trump-reaction-eu-india-trade-deal-fta.html
Looks like the new world order is shaping up nicely.
Got exit strategy?
How’s that for the 500% “secondary sanctions” against any country (like India) that buys Russian oil that Miss Lindsey Graham wanted? She must be weeping.
nah. she’s probably jerking off. sick bastards like her and trump and bessent……….and 1/3 of the country get off on misery
i think you are very smart to leave if you don’t have very close loved ones in the states. but think about this. if we collapse into a depression, the pickings will be wonderful here. i’m not really worried about a collapse in this empire. experienced one in the 90s Russia. the best advice is have solid circle of family/friends and lots of real money spread around the world. gold is money…….to quote JPM, the man. good luck buddy.
The pickins may be good but you’ll still have MAGA until 2036 when most will drop off by then. That’s the time to come back, if at all.
About what was expected given current geopolitic disruptions and failed economic policies.
What is the NSA
SA = Seasonally Adjusted
NSA = Not Seasonally Adjusted
Shipments lower than during covid? And, now could it be that Consumer Confidence came in today lower than covid too? YES.
Trump needs ‘just a few more tariffs’ and all in this new year we were told to wait for will be fine.
NOT! We have an insane and murdering Adminstration.
““First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— Martin Niemöller