Here is the chart for railroad traffic for the week ended 8/22/09
The data are for all non-intermodal rail carloads. I have been following this statistic as an indicator of the state of the economy. It appears that the trend started about 5 or 6 weeks ago of increasing rail traffic is holding to form. Total non-intermodal traffic stands at about 280,000 carloads versus 250,000 carloads (an increase of about 12 percent). While I was concerned a few weeks ago that the uptick was a blip, I am more confident now that we are seeing is the real deal. I should note that traffic this time last year was on order of 325,000 carloads, so we are far from being out of the woods.
Intermodal carloads are shown below:
The pattern here is not as positive. Though there has been an uptick in the past few weeks, the most recent observations are flat.
The biggest user of the railroads is the coal industry. The recent trend in coal shipments is shown below:
The trend is positive, but still slow. Like a big oil tanker, the US economy is large, unwieldy, and hard to turn. But, methinks, once the momentum has turned the progress will be tough to reverse.
Cash for clunkers?
The following chart show carloads for motor vehicles and equipment.
The recent trend does seem positive, but I don't know if that is a normal seasonal pattern or some offshoot of the cash for clunkers program.