RAIL TRAFFIC DOWN 17.9% YEAR OVER YEAR
Still no signs of recovery in the real economy. Rail traffic for the latest week reported yet another huge year over year decline of 17.9%. The comps should get easier as we move into the third and fourth quarter, but make no mistake – the “better than expected” earnings are not a sign of a v-shaped recovery, but rather an overly pessimistic group of analysts.
The AAR reports:
WASHINGTON, July 30, 2009 — The Association of American Railroads today reported that rail carloadings for the week ended July 25, 2009 continue to show slight improvement, but rail traffic remains down compared with the same period last year. U.S railroads reported originating 273,943 cars, down 17.4 percent compared with the same week in 2008. Regionally, carloadings were down 15.6 percent in the West and 20 percent in the East.
Intermodal volume of 193,332 trailers or containers was down 17.9 percent from the same week last year. Container volume fell 12.1 percent and trailer volume dropped 39.1 percent. Total volume on U.S. railroads for the week ending July 25 was estimated at 29.3 billion ton-miles, down 16.3 percent from the same week last year.
All 19 carload freight commodity groups were down from last year with declines ranging from 2.9 percent for nonmetallic minerals to 57.9 percent for metallic ores.
For the first 29 weeks of 2009, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 7,610,311 carloads, down 19.1 percent from 2008; 5,376,118 trailers or containers, down 17.2 percent, and total volume of an estimated 809.7 billion ton-miles, down 18.1 percent.
Love your blog. Read it all the time.
It looks to me like the trend in carloadings is better than it looks. Coal is a big part, but the lack of cooling days this summer is not letting that improve too much. OTOH, if you take out coal, there is a clear upward trend. Hope it continues!
I prefer to use intermodal because it translates to the consumer better. The recent stockpiling in China has skewed all the commodity data. Thanks for the compliments!
I look at the weekly trends and things are indeed looking up. Total weekly carloads and the 4-week moving average rose to their highest levels since March and, significantly, weekly intermodal traffic reached its highest level since January. See my chart at http://www.news-to-use.com/2009/07/us-rail-carloads-up-strongly-last-week.html
Carloads do not clearly represent the economy in my opinion. They are too skewed by the commodities. Intermodal is a better gauge of consumers and the real economy.
The weekly numbers are all over the place. If -18% compared to last year looks like improvement to you then I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. -18% this long into a recession is a staggering number. Any bits of hope are meager at best in the rail data and it’s important that comps are becoming much easier as we move into the latter portion of the year.
The trucking data also rhymes with my rail data.
Not to mention the ATA reported record setting declines in air cargo traffic. The transports have always led us out of recessions. I don’t see why it will be different this time….
On the same theme, did you see YRC (symbol YRCW) results:
“Reports Q2 (Jun) loss of $3.53 per share, $1.82 worse than the First Call consensus of ($1.71); revenues fell 44.6% year/year to $1.33 bln vs the $1.59 bln consensus.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/YRC-Worldwide-posts-huge-2Q-apf-2258278872.html?x=0&.v=13