Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of David Ross of Stifel Nicolaus.
David Ross - Stifel Nicolaus
Gentlemen?
Rick O'Dell
Good morning, David.
Jim Darby
Good morning, David.
David Ross - Stifel Nicolaus
Rick you talked a little bit I guess just how the quarter developed and what you're seeing in October from both a tonnage and a pricing perspective? I mean, a lot of people are saying that it's really upside down this year with the beginning of the third quarter being the strongest and the end of the third quarter being the weakest?
Rick O'Dell
Yeah, sure. I'll let Jim go through the tonnage numbers and I'll make some comments on pricing.
Jim Darby
Okay. David, I'll walk you through what we experienced and then I'd like to give you a little bit of flavor for the impact of the hurricanes in the month of September. The LTL tonnage as we went through the quarter, July was up .seven tenths of a 1% over prior year, and then August was actually down 1% from a year ago and September was down 3.2% from a year ago.
And so that's how the quarter gets to minus 1.1 per day. So you're right, July was running ahead and then August and September were down. If we adjust for the hurricane impact as we see it, Septembers LTL tonnage would be down just about like August was which was down 1% from a year ago, if you takeout the impact of the hurricanes. And as we roll into October, we're seeing about that same trend. We're trending down about 1% from a year ago so far this month.
David Ross - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay. And then the pricing trends, Rick?
Rick O'Dell
I mean, David, honestly we're in the same business as lot of the other people have already announced and made comments and the net of mix changes. I mean, our pricing is negative from last year and it actually got worse quarter-to-quarter. And we said that in last quarter we were coming out of the quarter with lower yields than we went in.
And I've said this in the past. I think the longer the downturn goes on, it impacts both the as well as our customers. The more difficult the pricing environment becomes. So, I guess I'm confident that Saia has a good costing model and we use that with discipline to make good pricing decisions for the company as well as for our customers, but certainly a challenging environment.
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