TRANSPORT STATISTICS * Canada - TransCore: Spot freight volume sets new record

Toronto,ONT,CAN -Today's Trucking -21 March 2011: -- TransCore’s Canadian Freight Index set another record for spot market freight volume with a month over month increase of 11 percent, despite February is a short month... Load postings were up 36 percent year over year. February 2011 freight volume was more than double that of February 2009, during the economic downturn... February 2011 volumes also reached the highest levels for the month since TransCore began recording the Canadian freight data in 2001... This mirrors the findings on TransCore’s North American Freight Index that recorded the highest spot market truckload freight volume for the month of February since the company established the North American Freight Index in 1986... However, with loads reaching an all time high, equipment continued to decline. Capacity dropped to the lowest level since 2005... (Image from move.rmi.org: truck freight streamline)

* North America surface trade way up in 2010

Washington,DC,USA -Today's Trucking (CAN) -18 March 2011: -- The value of North American surface trade was down, but the volume was way up in 2010, compared to 2009 levels, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation...  Surface transportation trade between the U.S. and its North American Free Trade Agreement partners Canada and Mexico jumped a record 24.3 percent in 2010, the department said...  The increase was the largest since the DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics began tracking the data in 1994 but the $791 billion value of NAFTA surface trade remained below pre-recession levels of 2007 and 2008...  U.S.-Canada surface transportation trade totaled $471 billion in 2010, an increase of 22.1 percent. The value of imports carried by truck from Canada was 17.3 percent higher in 2010 than 2009 while the value of exports carried by truck rose 21.8 percent...  Surface transportation trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaled $320.3 billion, up 27.6 percent. Truck imports rose 26.5 percent while exports rose 24.3 percent...  In 2010, 86.2 percent of U.S. merchandise trade by value with Canada and Mexico moved on land. Total North American surface transportation trade value in 2010 increased by 13.4 percent compared to 2005, and was up by 37.5 percent compared to 2000, a period of 10 years...