January Factory Orders Fall 0.5%

rders placed with factories fell 0.5% in January, the Commerce Department said Thursday, but orders excluding transportation equipment rose 1.4%.

Falling orders translate to less demand for trucking services because factories use trucks to ship raw materials and finished products.

The drop in total orders to $343.2 billion followed a revised 1.8% increase in December, Commerce said. Excluding transportation orders rose for the seventh time in the past nine months.

The drop in orders was led by a 2.3% dip in bookings for durable goods, which account for more than half of the report. Bookings for motor vehicles dropped 3.2% and aircraft orders slumped 28.1%.

Orders for capital goods excluding aircraft, a proxy for future business investment, rose 1.3%.

Factory inventories increased 0.2%, the largest rise since last February. The inventory-to-shipments ratio held at a record-low 1.26 months, Commerce said.

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