US Rail Traffic Falls Significantly

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Saturnalia
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US Rail Traffic Falls Significantly

Unread post by Saturnalia »

The totals have been trending down over the last few months, but now are beginning to drop off. US carloads fell almost 13% the week ending Dec 5. Intermodal softened the blow to only 6.6% when combining intermodal and general carload traffic.

Ores are off 24.6%
Coal down 21.8%
Petroleum down 14.4%

Only commodity groups to rise were miscellaneous, up 15.5% and auto traffic, up 1.8%. However, those two are low-volume featherweights compared to Coal, Oil and Ore.

For the first 48 weeks of this year, traffic is off by 1.9%, carloads and intermodal units.

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~Z~
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Re: US Rail Traffic Falls Significantly

Unread post by ~Z~ »

Would be good to add the detail that on each of these, this is comparing to the same week in 2014.
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railohio
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Re: US Rail Traffic Falls Significantly

Unread post by railohio »

The weekly stats are the least useful. Intermodal can show a major loss if the UPS peak season is shifted by a week or two, even with the same overall traffic levels. A late harvest can skew the weekly grain numbers. And a warm fall can flatten coal, even if traffic comes back in a cold winter.
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Re: US Rail Traffic Falls Significantly

Unread post by hoborich »

Kinda blows that media crap about the economy recovering. It wasn't too long ago that NSC was a $133 stock.
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