2025-11-18
12 分钟Sometimes, when I'm driving down the highway,
it can feel like there's nothing else on the road but these huge trucks.
A lot of them have branding on the side,
retailers like Walmart or Amazon or shipping companies like UPS.
But most big trucks whizzing by don't give much indication at all about what's inside.
These big rigs aren't just carrying clothes and appliances and toilet paper.
They're carrying the raw materials and components for these and other products.
Basically, if it needs to be moved around within the US, it's probably being moved by truck.
Most companies hire trucking companies to do that shipping.
And those trucking companies need big enough fleets to meet demand.
So you could see how sales of these heavy trucks could be a sign of how much companies need to ship.
And so how much the economy is buzzing.
It's an indicator certainly of freight activity and freight activity is an indicator of the sort of general economy.
That's my colleague Bob Tita, who covers manufacturing for the journal.
Historically, the data do what Bob says all the way back to the 1960s.
Declines in heavy truck sales often match up to economic contractions.
And right now, truck sales aren't looking great.
Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that in August of this year,
the most recent month data is available thanks to the recent government shutdown,
heavy truck sales fell almost 20% from the year before, hitting their lowest point since July 2020.