AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report for Friday, 3/26/21

National Average Price for Regular – Current: $2.255; Month Ago: $2.324; Year Ago: $2.217. National Average Price for Diesel – Current: $2.444; Month Ago: $2.488; Year Ago: $2.360.

I was recently at the Ricoh Marketing Innovator Symposium in Boulder, Colo., which attracted a range of attendees from the print, brand and agency worlds. One of the key takeaways from the event centered around the generational divide — different age demographics don’t just want different messages, they want different messaging platforms and different forms of communication altogether. The reality is that age does matter and using the wrong platform with the wrong demographic will ultimately hurt a publisher’s ability to effectively reach — and market to — those individuals.

“The frustratingly choppy freight environment continued in November,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “Since hitting a low in January of this year, tonnage is up a total of 1.1%, but the path has been fraught with nice gains one month only to come back down the next. The good news is that the overall trend this year is up, albeit at a slow rate.” In November, the ATA advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index equaled 112.5 compared with 114.6 in October. The index, which is based on 2015 as 100, was down 1% from the same month last year. The not seasonally adjusted index, which calculates raw changes in tonnage hauled, equaled 109.6 in November, 9.6% below October. The seasonally adjusted decrease follows a sequential 1.2% gain in October, which was unchanged from the November 19 press release.