If you ask trailer trucking professionals they would probably tell you that the trucking services industry could be an indicator of the health of the American economy. If we could find away to accurately predict the current health of the US economy in the future this would allow America to more accurately predict the financial waves that have been rocking the American economy of late and any further financial waves that could be coming down the road in the future. Now a group of researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management could have figured out away to use the credit-card fuel purchase patterns of the trucking transport industry to help predict future financial waves in the American economy.
The Anderson School of Management has apparently been at work with Ceridian, the fuel-card people, tracking the current diesel fuel purchases of the trucking industry of North America. They hope to use the data they collect using the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index they have created to provide them with information on the health of the American economy. They have apparently been collecting the data they intend to use on an hour-by-hour basis in the industries that consume diesel fuel and if the data is as useful as they hope, we could see this idea grow into another tool that will allow American to better predict the future of business and the economy as American travels further into the century of the environment.