US truck tonnage edges higher in March, posts strongest annual gain since 2022
Trucking activity in the United States continued to climb in March, though at a more modest pace than the previous month, according to new data from the American Trucking Associations (ATA).
The group’s seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index rose 0.3% in March, following a 2.9% jump in February.
While the month-to-month gain was relatively small, the bigger story was on a year-over-year basis.
“March wasn’t particularly strong sequentially, but it was the largest year-over-year increase since October 2022,” said ATA chief economist Bob Costello.
The index reached 117.0 in March, up from 116.6 in February, and was 3% higher than the same month a year earlier — the strongest annual gain in more than two years.
For the first quarter as a whole, tonnage was up 2.1% compared to the same period in 2025, marking the best quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2017 when measured on both a sequential and year-over-year basis, Costello noted.
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