A theme within freight transportation, supply chain, and logistics circles, which is always among the key “top of mind” themes, is the state of the economy, from various perspectives, whether it be, in our case, a freight or macroeconomic perspective.
It is hard for me to forget that back when I started writing for this magazine back in 2005 that the mantra, or thesis, that the freight economy is an early indicator for the overall, or macroeconomy, was essentially drilled into my mind.
That was a big lesson for me, especially at that time, as I was pouring over tonnage and volume reports across various modes of freight transportation, public company earnings reports, and, of course, more “general” economic indicators, such as retail sales, manufacturing and services economy data, housing, commodities, and a whole host of others, too, like inflation, inventories, and energy prices, of course, not to be lost in this shuffle, of course, is perhaps one of the biggest economic “tells,” that being GDP.
