Merely unseasonable dips in freight demand have cemented into a downward trend, reflecting shippers’ overfull inventories and consumer concerns about rising inflation. Even after adjusting for tricky comps, the Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI) continues to underperform against year-ago levels.
OTVI declined by 0.93% over the past week and is down 17.6% on a year-over-year (y/y) basis. Comparisons on a y/y basis can be thorny, however, because OTVI does not necessarily measure true freight flow in the market, since it can be inflated by an uptick in tender rejection rates. At this time last year, OTVI was greatly inflated by rising tender rejections, whereas tender rejections are currently in free fall.
