September, a key month for shipping ahead of the holiday season, is usually a boom one inside the freight business and supply chain, with products moving from warehouses to stores or consumers.

Not this year.

The latest Logistics Managers' Index , which tracks inventory levels, warehouse costs, transportation capacity, and pricing, shows the lowest reading it has ever recorded for transportation utilization in the month of September.

The strong growth usually seen due to shipments of holiday merchandise, "we are not seeing that," said Dale Rogers, a professor in the supply chain management department at Arizona State University and one of the authors of the LMI.

The LMI score is a combination of eight key metrics in the logistics supply chain covering warehousing, transportation, and

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