American Trucking Associations’ seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index saw a slight gain in September after falling 4% the month before.

The Index increased 0.2% compared to August, equaling 117.6 and was up 3.5% compared to the same month in 2018.

“This was the first month in 2019 that we did not see a significant increase or decrease in tonnage,” said Bob Costello, ATA chief economist. “For the entire third quarter, the index was up 1.2% over the previous quarter and 4.5% from a year earlier, both are nice gains.”

ATA noted that ATA’s tonnage data is dominated by contract freight, which has performed significantly better than spot market freight this year.

ATA revised its August Index downward from the 118.3 number it originally reported to just 117.3. The index is up 4.1% year-to-date when compared to the same period of 2018.

The not seasonally adjusted index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by the fleets before any seasonal adjustment, equaled 114.8 in September, 7.5% below the August level (124). In calculating the index, 100 represents 2015.