Weekly Rail Container Volume Highest on Record
Carload traffic continued moderate weekly gains, with U.S. railroads originating 295,948 carloads for the week, up 7.1 percent compared with the same week in 2009, but down 11.3 percent from the same week in 2008.
Sixteen of the 19 carload commodity groups increased from the comparable week in 2009. Those posting the most significant increases were metallic ores, up 65.4 percent; metals and metal products, up 38.8 percent; and farm products excluding grain, up 37.6 percent. Two commodity groups, farm products excluding grain and metallic ores, also posted increases over 2008."
Other highlights for Week 32 include:
1. Cumulative year-to-date rail freight volume in Canada is up by 15.2% compared to last year.
2. Cumulative year-to-date rail activity is by 31.7% for major Mexican railroads.
3. Year-to-date rail freight volume for all major North America railroads is above last year's level by 14.5%.
Bottom Line: Warren Buffett's single most favorite economic indicator continued to show signs of improvement again in the most recent weekly report on rail traffic from the AAR. Based on the volume of raw materials, natural resources, lumber, coal grain, chemicals, metals, motor vehicles and paper products moving around the country by rail, the economic picture continues to get a little brighter almost every week.
4 Comments:
Generally these figures indicate orders placed a few months ago. Does it make sense to be concerned that as the current perceived slowdown worries companies, that these figures could be lagging indicator?
"... these figures could be lagging indicator?"
No, much of this raw material (ex coal) is the beginning of the manufacturing process. The cycle of converting raw materials into parts and then the finished product is truly manufacturing. With a just-in-time manufacturing cycle the companies in raw material conversion business have to confident of future orders.
meanwhile, unemployment claims are up again. 500k, highest in 9 months.
the philly fed index actually went negative on current situation, future orders, and on employment. it can be a bit of a noisy indicator, but this is not good news.
Q2 gdp growth will be halved when it is revised due to trade balance. 1.2% growth is pretty low for this stage of a recovery.
new mortgage applications declined again and remain at the lows for the recession.
the indicators arguing against rail and port volume seem to be really piling up.
i have a question:
from looking at the release
http://www.aar.org/newsandevents/freightrailtraffic/~/media/aar/weekly_traffic_reports/2010/2010-08-19-wtr.ashx
i see an interesting gap.
total intermodal units are up 20.8% from a year ago.
but, ton miles are only up 8.7%. the 2 biggest shipment category gainers were ores and metal goods, so i doubt it's that the containers are lighter.
so what's the story with that gap? might the container count indicator be being skewed upward by more and shorter trips being used intercity or some sort of hand-off issues to trucks etc?
why else would containers be going up so much more rapidly than ton miles?
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