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RAIL FREIGHT SAYS NO RECOVERY

12 May 2009 by Cullen Roche 1 Comment

Rail freight for the month of April continued to plummet in what appears to be mounting signs that the “green shoots” are nothing more than weeds. Freight was down 17% for the week ending April 30th and down 18% for the month.

railfrt

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The massive surge in commodity related names and the stock market in general would suggest that a recovery is on the horizon, but the data from rail freight and truckers just doesn’t support it.  If we were seeing a real recovery you can almost guarantee that these figures would be seeing sharp improvements.  It’s just not happening.

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to find much in rail traffic data in April to support the idea that the economy is starting to see ‘green shoots’ — it may still just be weeds,” said AAR Senior Vice President John T. Gray. “That said, rail service right now is top notch, and railroads are well positioned to do their part to get America moving again once the economy kicks into high gear.”

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Comments
  • MW

    Perhaps in addition to being a jobless recovery, it will also be a GPD-less recovery where GPD continues to go down, or at least not up. In other words, it's a recovery because the government tells you it is… /sarc

    05/12/2009 at 4:22 AM