Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 3/1/24

National Average Price for Regular Unleaded Current: $2.182; Month Ago: $2.176; Year Ago: $2.651. National Average Price for Diesel Current: $2.406; Month Ago: $2.422; Year Ago: $2.972.

American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 0.7% in May after falling 0.6% in April. In May, the index equaled 113.7 (2015=100) compared with 114.5 in April. “Tonnage, despite falling slightly over the last two months, remains well above the lows of last year,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “This is no small deal considering that truck tonnage fell significantly less than many other indicators during the depths of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. “One freight segment that is helping tonnage is gasoline as demand for travel, both commuting and vacation related, picks up,” he said. “I’m also expecting retail freight to remain robust as inventories are at historic lows. As retail stocks are rebuilt, it will boost freight. As has been the case for some time, trucking’s biggest challenges are not on the demand side, but on the supply side, including difficulty finding qualified drivers.”

American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council and Decisiv Inc. said combined parts and labor expenses fell 1.4% during the fourth quarter of 2023. In the latest Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark Report, TMC and Decisiv found that 25 key VMRS systems dipped in the final quarter of 2023, reversing a 2.1% increase the previous quarter. The decrease was driven largely by parts costs, which dropped 2.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023 while labor costs fell 0.2%. While quarter-over-quarter parts and labor costs both declined in the last three months of the year, the parts-to-labor ratio held steady at about 1.5 for the past year. On a year-over-year basis, combined parts and labor costs in final quarter of 2023 were 0.2% higher than the same quarter in 2022. However, in the annual comparison, a 2.2% drop in parts prices was offset by a 4.0% rise in labor costs.