“For the first time since March and April truck tonnage contracted for two consecutive months,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “Tonnage fell 1.8% in November, bringing the two-month total decrease to 2.9%, pushing tonnage to its lowest level since January 2024. Sluggishness in factory output continues to weigh on freight volumes, but another drag on the index has been fleet growth at private carriers, which is holding back how much freight is flowing to for-hire carriers.” In December, the ATA advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index equaled 111.3 compared with 112.6 in November. The index, which is based on 2015 as 100, was down 3.2% from the same month last year. The not seasonally adjusted index, which calculates raw changes in tonnage hauled, equaled 108.8 in December, 0.9% below November. The seasonally adjusted decrease follows a sequential 1.8% drop in November, which was revised up from the December 24 press release.

November futures dropped 0.5 percent in New York after climbing 1.6 percent Wednesday. Gasoline supplies dropped a third week to the lowest level since November 2015, while distillate stockpiles fell by the biggest amount since 2011, according to government data. Crude inventories expanded by 4.59 million barrels last week, more than the 3.9 million-barrel gain projected in a Bloomberg survey. U.S. oil production also rose a second week. “The market focused on the sharp recovery in crude demand implied” by the decline in fuel inventories on Wednesday, said Jens Naervig Pedersen, a senior analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. “It adds to the bullish sentiment buoyed by concerns about the Iran nuclear deal and headlines about OPEC looking at a possible extension of output cuts.” U.S. gasoline stockpiles fell by 2.13 million barrels last week to 216.2 million, the Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday. Distillate inventories, a category that includes diesel, dropped by 5.69 million barrels. Crude output expanded by 157,000 barrels a day to 9.51 million a day. Click Read More below for more of the story.

UPM Plywood, Arctic Astronautics and Huld announce today a joint mission to launch the first ever wooden satellite, WISA WOODSATTM, into Earth’s orbit by the end of 2021. WISA Woodsat will go where no wood has gone before. With a mission to gather data on the behavior and durability of plywood over an extended period in the harsh temperatures, vacuum and radiation of space in order to assess the use of wood materials in space structures. WISA Woodsat is a nanosatellite designed and built by Arctic Astronautics, and it is based on the Kitsat educational satellite. The satellite measures roughly 10 x 10 x 10 cm and weighs one kilogram. A suite of on-board sensors, including two cameras will be used to monitor the specially coated WISA®-Birch plywood.