National Average Price for Regular Unleaded Current: $3.157; Month Ago: $3.114; Year Ago: $3.538. National Average Price for Diesel Current: $3.608; Month Ago: $3.670; Year Ago: $4.047.

Futures in New York are up 1.5 percent this week after closing at the highest level in two weeks on Thursday. While the U.S. is pumping near record volumes, exports also jumped to a four-month high last week, helping drain the nation’s stockpiles. Oil stocks in the biggest U.S. storage hub plunged to the lowest level in more than three years. While crude struggled after the best January performance in more than a decade, it’s now finding its footing again as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia pledge to persist with output curbs to re-balance the market, and demand remains robust. Click Read More below for additional information.

Today, the American Trucking Associations released its latest ATA Freight Transportation Forecast: 2020 to 2031, which is conducted annually by IHS Markit, showing that despite contraction in 2020, the long-term trend for both trucking and overall freight shipments is still positive. Among the findings in this year’s Forecast: *Total freight volumes in 2020 are likely to collapse by 10.6% to 14.6 billion tons, although truck freight volumes falls a smaller 8.8%. *Trucking volumes are expected to rebound in 2021, rising 4.9% next year and then growing 3.2% per year on average through 2026. *Overall freight revenues in 2020 will total $879 billion, rising to $1.435 trillion in 2031.