Total N.American rail traffic dipped to 688K from 693K last week. Most of the dip can be traced to Irene. We saw a drop in intermodel traffic:
ntermodal freight transport involves the transportation of freight in an intermodal container or vehicle, using multiple modes of transportation (rail, ship, and truck), without any handling of the freight itself when changing modes.
Essentially the cargo comes in a a ship, the container is lifted off the ship to a truck or train and then transported to a truck/train for final delivery. The contents never exits the container (in theory).
With the east coast and most of the Atlantic (shippers) dodging Irene last week, seeing a disruption here is not a surprise at all and should not be looked as as anything more than that. Going forward, the next two weeks will be interesting. Rail traffic is measured Sat-Sat so since Irene hit NC on Sat and continued up the entire east coast through Sunday (and the cleanup since), once has to expect this weeks numbers to take a hit also. Then, the following week we get the labor day holiday and the usual holiday week drop we always see. We will have more clarity when this weeks data comes out. Since the data cutoff was in the middle of the storm, we are only looking at 1/2 the picture now.
What does it all mean? The numbers will not be reliable indicators of true economic activity for a few weeks. We may surge this week as we get extra trains added and overtime worked to get goods shipped or we may not depending on track damage due to the storm. Then we have to throw a holiday weekend into the mix.
We will still track them to see if any trends develop though. The goods news from last week was that despite the disruptions, auto’s posted a 3.5% volume gain on the week for their 4th consecutive weekly increase.
Here is the chart:
