THE RECESSION IN RAIL TRAFFIC CONTINUES….
The recession in railroads continues unabated. This is likely the surest proof we have that Ben is simply reflating the bubble while the real economy continues to flounder. Carloadings were down 17.2% year over year and intermodal traffic declined 15.7%. On the positive side, it’s quite clear that rail traffic has stabilized and doesn’t continue to decline, however, the robust recovery that equities and other markets have priced in is completely non-existent in the rail data. The weakness was broad across all segments of the economy. The weakness was particularly apparent in metals and forest which could be a sign that the recent weakness in housing and lumber prices is a trend:
The AAR reports:
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 8, 2009 — The Association of American Railroads today reported that for the week ended Oct. 3, 2009, rail traffic continues to reflect the down economy – originating 277,734 carloads, down 17.2 percent compared with the same week in 2008. All of the 19 carload freight commodity groups were down from the same week last year, with declines ranging from 2.7 percent for chemicals to 53.2 percent for metallic ores.
Intermodal traffic of 206,293 trailers or containers on U.S. railroads was down 15.7 percent from the same week last year. Container volume fell 10 percent and trailer volume dropped 37 percent.
Regionally, carloads were down 16.4 percent in the West and 18.3 percent in the East. For the first 39 weeks of 2009, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 10,381,905 carloads, down 18.1 percent from 2008; 7,347,299 trailers or containers, down 16.8 percent, and total volume of an estimated 1.11 trillion ton-miles, down 17.3 percent. Total volume on U.S. railroads for the week ending October 3 was estimated at 29.7 billion ton-miles, off 16.6 percent from the same week last year.
Source: Railfax, AAR
On a week-over-week basis, carloads are up about 3%, but almost all of that is due to grain and coal carloads, which are probably more indicative of the harvest season and getting prepared for winter heating season.
Anyone long in this market is going to get burned bad. This is like watching the volcano out in Washington 20 odd years ago. The geologists had been warning about an explosion for so long that many of the locals did not believe them. And if you’ve watched the video, when it happened there was no hope and no way or time to escape!
Go back 3, 4 6 weeks. The data is flat to marginally higher. It has certainly stabilized, but there are almost no signs of recovery.