Not all economic activity generates freight equally. We use a freight-weighted GDP Freight Composite Index that tackles the question, “is the economy generating freight?” When the amount of freight generated is greater than the number of Class 8 capacity available, new Class 8 trucks are needed.

The ACT Freight Composite modifies the GDP data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis by mostly excluding real personal consumption expenditures on services, emphasizing real personal consumption expenditures on durable goods and real private residential and non-residential fixed investment, adding imports (which are negative in the GDP accounts) except for oil imports, and adjusting for changes in personal savings.

In short, the ACT Freight Composite is constructed from the freight-driven components of US GDP, excluding services and overweighting durable goods and housing investments. One difference in the Freight Composite, compared to other freight indexes, is that is represents both the for-hire and private TL markets.