FTR’s Shippers Conditions Index for July ticked up ever so slightly to 0.5 from June’s 0.3 reading. Softer capacity utilization and slightly weaker freight rates led to a marginally better overall market for shippers during the month, offsetting less favorable fuel costs.

The outlook for shippers’ conditions over the next couple of years remains soft but not especially negative with index readings forecast at close to neutral territory. Fuel costs could determine whether the SCI is either slightly positive or slightly negative in any given month.

Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, commented, “Aside from disruptions caused by labor strife at the ports or by weather, shippers likely will not see much change market conditions during the months ahead. We expect an incremental tightening of capacity and, eventually, freight rates but nothing that resembles the upcycles of 2017 or 2020, for example.”

The August FTR’s Shippers Update, published September 6, analyzes the recent shift of container imports back to the West Coast and whether it might be sustained beyond the impending strike at U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports.

The Shippers Conditions Index tracks the changes representing four major conditions in the U.S. full-load freight market. These conditions are freight demand, freight rates, fleet capacity, and fuel price. The individual metrics are combined into a single index that tracks the market conditions that influence the shippers’ freight transport environment. A positive score represents good, optimistic conditions. A negative score represents bad, pessimistic conditions. The index summarizes the industry’s health at a glance.