So, In my quest to see where the economy stands, I came across some really enlightening data. Namely railroad traffic data published by the Association of American of Railroads. They report data on carloads, by type of product, on a weekly basis. I figure that looking at the weekly data can give a good idea of where the economy is in terms of the recession. So, here's the first chart:
This chart traces the weekly carload data from September 1, 2009 to the week ending August 8th 2009. The carload data are for all products, but exclude intermodal (trailers & containers) carloads. For reference, the lowest bar is for the Christmas/New Year holidays. The trend line is a moving 4-week average. You can see that traffic really fell off during the 4th quarter of 2008 and has stayed low. The last 3 or 4 weeks show some uptick in traffic, but it would be hard to conclude that things are getting rosy fast. The recent Fed statement that the economy seems to have leveled is borne out in these data.
I also plotted Coal shipments (by far the largest product category):
Coal shipments are an interesting product to look at because they are so tied to electrical generation. We see basically the same pattern as above, with again a slight uptick in the last 3-4 weeks. I should note weather plays a role in electricity generation as a warm summer will yield extra demand due to air conditioning. I haven't looked at the data, but it seems like this summer has been cooler than last.
Next I looked at chemicals - the next largest product category:
Generally the chemicals that are shipped by rail are commodity type chemicals. We see a somewhat muted pattern for this product category -- lower than last year, but pretty steady. (I should check on that first data point, it looks out of whack)
Next we look at crushed stone, sand & gravel. Perhaps an indicator of highway and other infrastructure spending. Are the stimulus dollars having an impact?
Things still look flat.
Lastly, I took a look at intermodal traffic -- truck trailers and containers. This category is large and would seem to serve as a good indicator of how imports are faring.
Here we see the biggest drop off in the 4th quarter of 2008. Things have been flat since March, with perhaps a slight uptick recently. Nothing there to really write home about.
There you have it.
I think this data source is very valuable because it is timely -- it comes out weekly on Thursdays or the following week. Because there are only a few railroads (and all of these are members of the AAR) that make up most of the freight traffic, the survey almost covers perhaps 90% of the total rail volume.