New orders received by U.S. factories beat Wall Street expectations and rose 0.9% in September, while inventories continued to shrink, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

It was the fifth month out of six that orders rose, the department said. They dropped an unrevised 0.8% in August. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected orders to increase 0.8%.

Machinery, which makes up roughly 7% of factory orders, had the largest surge of 7.9% in its biggest increase since March 2008.

Inventories have now fallen for 13 months in a row, with factories paring their stocks by 1% in September. This is the longest streak of shrinking inventories since they fell 15 months in a row beginning in February 2001.