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Weekly US Railroad Carloading Decline Accelerates, Hits 1993 Levels
The latest data out of the Association of American Railroads has been released. While a month ago the weekly YoY decline hit a very troublesome -17.1%, the last weekly decline added another almost 3% to the deterioration, and is now down -19.8% for Week 36. Cumulative traffic decline is flat at -18.4%. Including intermodal traffic or ton-miles in the calculation does nothing to improve the conclusion. Not a single "carload originated" category has improved, and in fact even the relatively stable ones from the prior update have slumped.
Rosie's take on this indicator: "The data are not seasonally adjusted so when you actually take a look at the levels, they are all the way down to where they were in 1993." Yet recent data undoubtedly had the benefit of the Cash for Clunkers subsidy, which is now dead and buried. Upcoming freight data will be even worse.
So now we know that not only is international trade at cataclysmic levels (which is why none of our "trading partners" care much about what depths the dollar may plumb any time soon), but also that internal freight is at nearly three decade lows. And one is supposed to build a recovery on this? Where is Warren Buffett to discuss his one favorite forward looking metric? Apparently not even he cares about traditional valuation metrics, when he has some conflicts of interest regarding the financial system which is running not so much on a healthy economy but merely on governmental payments going directly into reserve accounts and bonus checks.
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Where is Warren Buffett to discuss his one favorite forward looking metric?
Last seen buying put protection on WFC?
haha! i was just gonna say that - there have been some massive WFC put purchases going up in the last weeks. My bet it is him - he knows just how much junk there is there. Buffett has lost all credibility, if there was anymore left to lose.
I also think it has been phenomenal that transports just keep shooting up. The inverse oil trade with truckers is particularly amusing. Then you get comments out of CSX management yesterday saying everything was A-OK but with zero proof or substance behind the fluff. And now that CfC subsidy is done.... well, heaven forbit Buffett mention anything.
TD, please just post something bullish, full of green shoots and the like...just make it up if you need to. the mkt will turn & you can yank the post later.
I agree, find something PLEEASE! Us bears are dyin!
It's starting to feel alot like Christmas...
The Christians I know are planning lots of baked goods and arts & crafts as presents, and these are well to do spirit of the season type folks. It certainly is starting to feel like an abysmal holiday season is on the way.
i used to have a lot of respect for warren. not anymore. he reminds me of paul krugman...he only believes whatever a democrat president tells him to believe.
"paul krugman...he only believes whatever a democrat president tells him to "...
I don't think that's fair.
I think Krugman and the like are caught in the belief that while this is not a normal situation, it can be analyzed and remedy applied in accord with normal economic theory for a recession.
I believe this is his position because on a call in show with Krugman (can't remember which one, sorry) he became visibly irritated when a caller suggested there were structural problems that needed addressing, beyond banking reform. So it seems it's a cognitive dissonance issue, not an undue influence issue.
Have you read Krugman consistently? His opinions change with the wind. One day he has graphs explaining how an x-dollar increase in govt spending will increase GDP by y amount and lobbying *hard* for the increase, the next he's saying that it's impossible to use models to predict economic behaviour, the next he's blaming everything on the Republicans. It's like having a front row seat to a George Orwell play.
Krugman is an idiot. It is no wonder that the NY Times is going bankrupt with jerk-offs like that writing copy (don't get me started on Ben Stein).
...an x-dollar increase in govt spending will increase GDP
...impossible to use models to predict economic behaviour(sic)
...next he's blaming everything on the Republicans
Right, and this is inconsistent only if you have a short attention span.
As TD points out consistently, the only thing propping up the markets is fake GDP from Stimulus (and printing... PK can show you roughly how much GDP too). The markets can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent... oh wait, that was Keynes. Deregulation started by Ronny RayGun and accelerated under Bush I & II allowed the abuses that got us to here (yes, Clinton wasn't able to reverse, what with triangulation and all that).
How does any of this make Krugman an Idiot? Seems to me it makes him someone who can handle more than one concept at a time (next he's talking about something else relevant). ?
He was a legitimization vehicle. Sorry the guy's too stupid to figure out he's getting used.
Gamblers are seen in Dens. Buffet the "greatest Gambler" of the century. This book is coming out end DEc2009.
Hey, c'mon now. Those are just stats. Like Cessna's cx'd business jet orders. Don't worry, Lloyd's folks can take care of the RR stocks with a simple upgrade.
upgrade right before issuing a secondary.
Seems the only thing companies CAN sell anymore is more shares.
DAN rallies on dilution
Dan... i know right... freaking amazing
No company with any ties to anyone in the Administration will be allowed to go bankrupt. Therefore, buy buy buy - the cheaper the better. When to stop - $10? Who knows, 8-ball says ask again later. If any TBTF bank owns their debt, double the highest imaginable price target.
labor day
america’s tiny manufacturing sector improves but massive service economy gets worse.
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Manufacturing activity in the central Atlantic region expanded for the fifth straight month in September, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond reported Tuesday. All broad indicators were in positive territory, with manufacturers noting their first increase in worker numbers since December 2007. The bank’s manufacturing index stood at 14 in September from 14 in August. Its shipment index rose to 22 this month from 21 in August. The employee index rose to 5 in September from 0 last month. Numbers above zero indicate expanding activity. On the service side, revenues deteriorated to -12 from -8 in August.
what’s the opposite of green shoots?
thank you for posting this information. such information adds value to the investment decision making process.
More green shoots!
I don't have access to exact info,but it seems that ETFC has traded almost 10% the entire float in less than an hour and half into trading?!!
4 times the average volume in 1.5 hours over a range of >8 cents. Incredible what people do with computers nowadays. Flash was banned right?
For those of you who like conspiracy theories: The Fed is no longer publishing MEW (Mortgage Equity Withdrawal) . This was one of the engines of the financial crisis - so much for an early warning on the next housing crisis.
It's all part of the BIG LIE.
Don't like the way an economic statistic is trending? Declare it no longer relevant and stop publishing it. Or change the method of calculation to achieve the results you want.
Get with the program boys. Either you're part of the BIG LIE or you're a chump.
As long as the BIG LIE is believed and acted upon by those who can influence (read manipulate) the markets, it's the truth. Perception is reality.
Right up to the point when it isn't.
My uncle Jeff works for CSX railroad and has been for the last 16 years. He's a longhaul engineer and usually runs between California and Ohio. He was just laid off and is now collecting unemployment.
The bad thing is that his son Dan was on his health insurance plan but because of his layoff Dan has to find health insurance. The new plan is going to make Dan buy a policy when the kid cannot afford it. Dan is 21 years old and health as a horse. Don't make sense! Forced to buy something he does not need or want. Commies.
Jeff took these photos of the trains rusting away from not being used.
http://i36.tinypic.com/30c86u1.jpg
All the more reason WAB and MTL screaming buys. Glad to see the stocks confirming.
How about this being quoted for the WSJ this morning:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090922-705740.html
"Those who deny that the economy is recovering either aren't paying attention to the data, or don't believe what they show. The stock market supports our view. It is a leading indicator and has been predicting a recovery since early March," Ed Yardeni, chief investment officer at Yardeni Research Inc., wrote in an early note.
I must not be paying attention to the *right* data...
It's futile to think that there should be justice in this world, no doubt.
But there ought to be some kind of penalty paid by the likes of Bernanke and Yardeni when they are proven wrong in the fullness of time.
Since these people have nothing at stake but their legacy, which they won't be around to redact, they can be completely upside down on everything they say and yet they
prosper. They are rewarded for failure.
There is something unnatural, venal, unholy, traitorous and evil about a Rubin, Greenspan, Paulson, Fuld, and the rest of The Tribe, that they can get completely away with the horrendous mistakes they make while the rest of the world must pay for every parking ticket, endure mind-numbing hardhips, bemoan lost fortunes, and institute drastic cuts in order to survive.
They are playing an extremely dangerous game that they will lose - or I should say the US middle class will be the losers. $DXY is on the verge of slipping below 76 - a key level of support. Next stop is 72 and then it's over. The middle class has "taken" a lot over the past 10 years. When their savings are wiped out and they can't feed their families, that's when the real fun starts!
If I'm not mistaken, the WSJ was touting crap EXACTLY like this in 1930 just before the second leg of the Great Depression dropped. I'm so sick of watching the market rise day after day when I (and everyone else on ZH) knows that it's nothing more than a cheap parlor trick played out by the powers that be. The worst part is that people all around me (sheeple) are actually starting to believe the crap. I've heard statements like: "Now that the economy has turned around, I'm going to start up my own business doing _____" or worse yet: "With housing prices at their lows, I'm going to get BACK into flipping properties." This is the prescription Dr. Bernake wrote up and the herd is starting to drink it down like the last 2 years never happened.
America has had 6 strong months to get ahead of what is about to hit us and sadly, very few have seized this opportunity for what it is: one last chance to prepare. I'm not a Bible-Nut by any means, but I can't help but think that we're living in a modern day Joseph of Egypt story [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_(Hebrew_Bible)] and that we're JUST NOW exhausting the 7 years of plenty. How many of us are ready for the 7 years of famine that will undoubtedly follow? Sure gold is pretty, but it doesn't have a lot of nutritional value and is hard to chew if that's all you've stockpiled.
ZH has confirmed that any number of Black Swans will ultimately bring this game back to reality. As morbid as it sounds, I (like many of you) wade through ZH and scan daily headlines just to confirm the reality of our circumstance. I actually look forward to the day when I open my browser and learn that the market capitulation has returned, spawned by some external economic or geopolitical event. Why? Because that is what it should be doing. This “Dow at near 10,000” garbage makes me want to vomit because it means we have failed as a population. The freedoms our forefathers fought for have slowly been relinquished to the banks and the governmental entities we created to protect us. Sad, but undeniably true and the course of correction is one that no one can change.
Some might call it defeatist, but many [formerly wealthy] called Joseph “master” when they needed an Egyptian hand-out because their riches were spent on luxuries instead of food.
The brutal fact of our reality is that it MUST get significantly worse before we have any chance of a true recovery.
Disclaimer: I'm long food-storage, water, gasoline (stored on my property), and most important - ammo.
The dark years of the depression will be played out again. There is absolutely NO CHANCE of them not happening unless the people in power accept the input of the people who can fix it knowing it will destroy both their real and imagined wealth. Since that's not going to happen or happen fast enough. There's going to be the same starvation the same trouble there was last time.
Rail car loadings are more and more an indicator of international trade, than domestic trade. The US is exporting more and more coal, food and raw materials. Rails are also carrying more and more of the container traffic.
US production for the domestic market has hit the toilet. Now it seems that international trade is going the same way.
No doubt true of commodities, only excess is exported.
The justification for paternalism is so great one cannot discount the possibility that the less efficient tractor-trailer indermodal method of transportation has not been favored over rail in order to keep employment stable in a profession where the capital investment is great when compared to returns of the independent truckers.
Show me a report that shows a similar decline in long haul shipping truckloads and I'll pull everything I have to invested in the market and wait for the correction.
Baltic Dry Index down 8 consecutive days.
September auto production down to 8.8 million SAAR, even lower than pre-cash for clunkers.
Something's gotta give soon.
TD... FDIC will get loans from "Healthy banks" and charge every other bank, fees. Guess what,the banksters are in favor of this. Thanx for the journey dollface
Next week will be a better indicator. The y/y comps for the week ending September 12 capture Labor Day this year but not last year.
Clearly this is a victory for...ah, forget it.
Early Summer of 2008, roughly 100 empty automobile carrier rail cars were left abandoned on an unused spur about 9m NW of Atlanta. At this time, graffiti, kudzu vines, and other green shoots cover the vast majority of these rail cars. They now appear completely derelict.
This is a chilling description. Reminds me of similar reports last week about the ghost fleet off Singapore, and in other (usually busy) ports of call around the world. The scope of the demand destruction is simply inconceivable.
In this game nature bats last. The credit collapse is a tactical issue; the real strategic threat is RUST. We may need to find make-work for a lot of people, and using them to offset entropy as our expensive infrastructure grinds itself into dust may be critical work.
cougar
Here's a WSJ story from February on idle railcars being stacked on unused tracks all over the country:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535033769344811.html
Railroads, which have seen shipping volumes drop by double-digit percentages in recent months, face a particularly vexing problem. The nation's five largest railroads have put more than 30% of their boxcars -- 206,000 in all -- into storage, according to the Association of American Railroads. Placed end-to-end, the cars would stretch from New York to Salt Lake City.
No Space
The railroads simply don't have enough space in their yards to store all the idled cars. So they look for convenient, out-of-the-way places to park them -- usually dormant tracks and rail sidings that are rarely used.
Where is Warren?
Busy selling his Moody's position (MCO)
Slowdown signs - China railway freight continues on down trend
Monday, 21 Sep 2009
Xinhua quoted the Ministry of Railways said China total volume of railway freight transportation in January to August was 2.17 billion tonnes down 2.9%YoY.
The ministry said the decline rate of freight transportation in January to August was 0.4 percentage points less than that in the January to July. In the H1 of the year the decrease rate was 4%. Meanwhile, total passenger transportation numbers stood at 1.05billion in January to August up by 5.3%YoY.
Data from the MOR also showed total investment in railway construction surged to CNY 294.12 billion in January to August rocketing up by 113.9%YoY in the wake of the CNY 4 trillion stimulus package announced by the central government last November to boost the country economy.
http://steelguru.com/news/index/2009/09/21/MTEyODEy/Slowdown_signs_-_Chi...
Meanwhile, investors are buying...
Duh!
The Railroad ran 12 trains a day and 4 at night in my area in 2003 and a number of war trains to Iraq. I can hear them then.
Today, there is a morning train, a noon express (UPS Z which is pretty short) a Paceline stack train and a few afternoon slow trains.
Very quiet which means very little economic is happening.
These charts only confirm what I can hear from the silence at the yonder railroad.
The world is destined to become a much quieter place.
cougar
Indeed. With the possible exception of a roving patrol encounter.
Merry Bustmas!
Yes. The numbers will be scary.
But the spin mechanism is baked into, don't you see?
The shelves are empty! Consumers are buying again, all the retailers are sold out on better then expected demand! People had to battle each other to get the goods, recovery is here!
Empty shelves means no need to discount, which means higher profits. Buy, buy, buy!
OT
Very funny vid from the Onion (NSFW)
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/prison_economy_spirals_as_price?ut...
How ironic. We've been monitoring a runaway train for years, now.
Leadership. Morals. "What's the fair value on that oath?"
You tools, this is the new economy, get with it. First we made stuff and saved money. A lot of hard work and not much fun. So then we bought stuff and borrowed money. More fun, but still a lot of work. Now we've reached the zenith, we don't have to do anything, the robots do all the work. Sit back and let the robots make you rich!
Damn straight. It works for .01% of the nation's population, but those are the people that count anyway.
The rest can mow lawns.
/sarcasm
cougar
None of this data matters anymore. My advice: invest your unemployment check in AIG. You will make more money working the market than you did at your old job. It's time to adjust to the new,new economy people.
We'll assume that was sarcasm. Nicely done.
On the off chance it was meant as a well-reasoned recommendation -- that was barking mad.
cougar
How does this correlate with the increase in Pacific coast onloadings/offloadings at the LA-area ports? Is there any lag in the data?
careful. last week's "worse" loadings perhaps exaggerated by labor day shifting back one week from last year, just as previous week's "improvement" (loadings down less than 10%) exaggerated by same shift.
lineside.-
Leave it to someone to come along and say something sensible.
Go away. You're ruining it for the rest of us.
;)
cougar
http://railfax.transmatch.com/
Total US Rail Traffic
Major Commodity Groups Total Grain Chemicals Food Forest Metals Coal Autos Intermodal
Current Week
Vs. 2008 (22.0%) (23.6%) (11.1%) (16.7%) (25.5%) (39.8%) (14.4%) (32.8%) (25.3%)
Vs. 2007 (24.1%) (27.7%) (19.5%) (23.8%) (33.9%) (43.5%) (8.6%) (49.7%) (28.3%)
4 Week Rolling Avg.
Vs. 2008 (15.2%) (17.1%) (6.6%) (8.1%) (24.0%) (35.2%) (11.6%) (17.5%) (15.2%)
Vs. 2007 (16.6%) (17.7%) (10.1%) (13.4%) (31.0%) (35.8%) (7.3%) (43.3%) (16.8%)
Quarter to Date
Vs. 2008 (17.2%) (17.9%) (10.0%) (8.7%) (25.2%) (37.9%) (11.6%) (24.7%) (17.3%)
Vs. 2007 (17.9%) (15.9%) (11.0%) (13.0%) (31.7%) (38.4%) (7.2%) (46.1%) (18.5%)
Year to Date
Vs. 2008 (18.3%) (22.2%) (14.9%) (10.5%) (27.3%) (45.5%) (9.3%) (44.8%) (16.9%)
Vs. 2007 (18.7%) (13.0%) (13.8%) (10.7%) (34.9%) (46.6%) (6.0%) (54.6%) (18.1%)
Rail Traffic compared to 2007 is down -24.1%
not sure if you guys read that it didn't include the holiday where as last year it did, thus the big drop.
I see/hear 200 car Norfolk Southern trains three times an hour running through Kentucky every day. They are all carrying containers from China.
Just like in China, the government is bumping up the numbers & visuals by shipping empty containers around. Do you really think all of those sea/land vans you see on the trains actually have goods in them?