More decent news here in rail trends as we begin to see some signs of life in traffic. Intermodal jumped 6.1% year over year and total traffic was up 2.7%. Carloads were down marginally. This week’s reading brought the 12 week moving average in intermodal to 2.8% which is the highest reading since May. AAR has the details on this week’s report:
“The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported mixed weekly rail traffic for the week ending August 10, 2013, with total U.S. weekly carloads of 288,803 carloads, down 0.2 percent compared with the same week last year. Intermodal volume for the week totaled 257,969 units, up 6.1 percent compared with the same week last year. Total U.S. rail traffic for the week was 546,772 combined carloads and intermodal units, up 2.7 percent compared with the same week last year.
Six of the 10 carload commodity groups posted increases compared with the same week in 2012, led by petroleum and petroleum products with 12,726 carloads, up 16.8 percent. Commodities showing a decrease compared with the same week last year included grain with 16,754 carloads, down 11.4 percent.
For the first 32 weeks of 2013, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 8,890,938 carloads, down 1.3 percent from the same point last year, and 7,747,032 intermodal units, up 3.5 percent from last year. Total U.S. traffic for the first 32 weeks of 2013 was 16,637,970 carloads and intermodal units, up 0.9 percent from last year.”
Chart via Orcam Research:
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
Comments are closed.