WANT TO GET SOME IDEA OF how the economy is doing? Look no further than the latest reports coming from the trucking companies.

There are all sorts of indicators, but none is more reliable than the trucking industry. And the industry remains in rough shape.

A lot of red ink still covers the latest quarterly earnings reports of Arkansas' publicly traded trucking companies. And those outside the state are faring no better. Indeed, the nation's largest trucking company, YRC Worldwide Inc. of Overland Park, Kan., has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy--it lost $309 million in its second quarter--but may have received salvation from recent pay and benefit concessions by its Teamster drivers.

The Freight Transportation Services Index is at its lowest level in 12 years, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. During the past 11 months, it has declined 14.8 percent. It's down 6.3 percent for the first half of 2009. While those figures include rail, inland waterways, pipeline and airfreight as well as for-hire trucking, it is the trucking industry that carries more than 70 percent of all the freight that moves in the United States.

Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations, said last month that truck tonnage was likely to be uneven in the months ahead. "While I am hopeful that the worst is behind us, I just don't see anything on the economic horizon that suggests freight tonnage is about to rise significantly or consistently," Costello said. "The consumer is still facing too many headwinds, including employment losses, tight credit, and falling home values, to name a few, that will make it very difficult for household spending to jump in the near term."

When the economic recovery finally comes about, the trucking industry will be among the first to give evidence.

There are some early indications that the bottom may have been-- reached: Freight levels have stopped declining, but trucks still aren't carrying enough to indicate the recovery is beginning. Slow consumer spending and manufacturing activity still plague the economy.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, the largest trucking firm headquartered in Arkansas, saw its second-quarter earnings plunge by half, to $24 million, compared with $50.6 million during the second quarter of last year, Revenue was down 21 percent, $769.8 million compared with $977.3 million a year earlier.

The company cited weak demand caused by the recession as well as aggressive pricing from competing trucking firms as the survivors seek ways to gain business.

Arkansas Best Corp.