The economy is not as bad as we are being led to believe, according to Donald Broughton, a St. Louis-based analyst with the Avondale Partners research firm, and the reason is because, despite the chaos of Wall Street, real people are still making stuff and buying stuff.

Broughton bases his opinion on an economic indicator known as truck tonnage. Every month, the American Trucking Associations surveys its members to determine the amount of goods they are shipping on the nation’s roadways. Truck tonnage has proven to be an accurate predictor of economic expansions and contractions. When it’s rising, the economy is improving. And it’s rising.

More accurately, it’s rising on a year-over-year basis. This July saw more tonnage than last July; thus June saw more tonnage than last June, and so on for 20 straight months starting with December 2009.

The past few months have been a little choppy, however. March and June were great, April and May not so much. Bob Costello, the ATA’s chief economist, said that July is typically a soft month, but this July was particularly so.

As for the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate, Broughton said that the best predictor for an improving jobs picture is rising truck driver pay. That’s because for many workers, driving a truck is the job of last resort, and if companies have to pay more to attract drivers, that means they have choices. Driver pay is rising.

Learn more in this week’s column for the Arkansas News Bureau.

A recent report by the pro-trucking American Transportation Research Institute featured a lot of good news, including this: The number of fatal crashes involving large trucks dropped from 5,684 in 1979 to 2,987 crashes resulting in 3,380 fatalities in 2009.

Here’s another way of looking at it: They dropped from 2.2 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to fewer than 1.3 from 2000 to 2009.

Big rigs also are causing far less injuries as well as property damage now than they were in the past.

The report, “Predicting Truck Crash Involvement: a 2011 Update,” was prepared by Micah Lueck, ATRI research associate, and Daniel Murray, ATRI vice president of research.

The purpose of the report was to analyze which driver violations and convictions in 2008 were most closely associated with a crash in 2009 and to compare that with a similar report done in 2005.

The most predictive behavior, surprisingly, was a conviction for either failing to use a turn signal or using one improperly, which increased the likelihood of a cash by 96 percent.

Why would such a seemingly minor conviction lead to so many more crashes? Murray said the industry has greatly reduced the number of truly hazardous drivers in recent years. A driver who doesn’t obey such a basic rule as using a turn signal properly, on the other hand, is an accident waiting to happen.

The Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration recently adopted a new enforcement mechanism, CSA, that better keeps track of company and driver violations. It will make it very difficult for unsafe drivers to job hop from company to company, as they sometimes do now. It’s a headache for companies, but it seems likely to make our highways safer.

Arkansas ranks first in the cost of doing business in a new CNBC survey but 33rd overall, one worse than last year.

The state ranked first in the cost of doing business and fourth in cost of living but fared poorly in the usual suspects: 45th in quality of life (I beg to differ); 44th in technology and innovation (sounds about right); 44th in business friendliness, meaning its legal and regulatory environment (GOP, this is your chance to help the state); and 40th in infrastructure and transportation (not going to fix that one this year).

Virginia was ranked first while Texas was second, so get ready to hear from the Legislature’s Rick Perry caucus.

Here’s the link to the story.