It seems as if we have two economies these days. One hovers on the verge of recession and hampers consumer spending due a scarcity of jobs and falling wages. The other is experiencing a robust recovery, creating thousands of new, good paying jobs, and boasts the lowest unemployment in many years. Which of these is true depends on each person’s individual point of view. It can be fact checked, but there are enough published facts to support either viewpoint. So I see it as a personal choice. The measure of GDP is perhaps one of the more objective statistics, but even that is said to be shaped by such nebulous factors as bad weather.
On the these trains forums and blogs, people frequently talk about the railroad recession, and they typically blame it on the demise of coal and to some extent on shrinking crude oil traffic. Less often do they consider the possibility that the low rail traffic may be one very visible component of a slow national economy.
In my opinion, the economy is being spun to be much better than it really is, and the slump in rail traffic paints a big picture that is hard to spin. So depending on a person’s viewpoint, they either accept the connection of the railroad recession to the national economy, or they come up with other explanations for the railroad recession.
Over on Fred Frailey’s blog, they have concluded that the sudden loss of business is due to incompetent marketing. It seems to me that poor marketing would be a long range problem that would not adequately account for a recession that began only a couple years ago.
Yeah unfortunately I believe the last “good” Economy was under George Bush. You need 3%+ GDP for a healthy economy in my opinion. We really do not know where we stand with unemployment due to bad government statistic gathering.
Whomever the next President is, I hope they fix the stats gathering for the economy, unemployment, and law enforcement agencies. It would fix a lot of the arguing and protesting going on now if we at least had a decent view.
We need to see consistent 250,000+ job growth monthly. Anyhow, we have been running about 1-2% GDP growth and I think that is why the railroads are off on earnings and traffic levels. Some believe that is the new normal. I say with our high immigration levels if that is the new normal than in 20 years we will be a very second rate country with a wide division between rich and poor.
When I worked in support of GM on a EDS contract I remember the railroad marketing folks when they came to call on GM, they would be in the lobby with their nametags and RR heralds on their nametags. Union Pacific was by far the best dressed, with shoes spit-shined, suits pressed and impeccable shirt tie combinations. CSX I never saw anyone there, nor did I ever see NS. BNSF I would rate a close second to UP. Never personally saw their marketing presentations though only how they dressed while in the lobby. This was also back in 1993 so things could have changed since then.
Every thing I see and read sends the image that slow economy is a world wide phenomenom at the present time. With the interconnectedness of economies all over the globe, each affects the other. The times of the US booming and the rest of the world struggling to survive are long past.
Railroads are only one form of transportation. While coal and CBR are down, new oil and gas pipelines are being built. Has trucking’s share of general freight gone up? What about waterways? You need to show that all freight transport is down before you cane make conclusions about the overall economy.
I think most of us were referring to how the Federal Reserve reaches it’s conclusions on the Economy. I can’t guess who taught you the above but generally they are incorrect. They generally use railroad car loads for the Beige Book NOT pipeline anything, NOT barge anything. I am not sure about Trucking it’s been over 22 years since I supported PhD Economists on a Economic Analysis staff. That Economics Staff as well used railroad carload reporting as a primary measure of the economy. I don’t remember them using trucking either but I could have missed it.
Pipeline plus Waterway combined have less share of transportation than the rails do. Plus I believe the railways reporting on traffic is much more reliable than the above two. So thats why I suspect they exclude pipelines and internal waterways.
You can read the Federal Reserve Beige Book yourself, it is posted online.
Please show me or highlight the areas where it refers to Barge or Pipeline Traffic, if you can find it. I only see Railroad carloads referenced as well as container loads referenced at ports.
Up here in the Great White North, aka Canada, our economy is based on natural resources ( always has been, despite attempts and claims to the contrary). Quite often we call ourselves " haulers of water and hewers of wood". I can tell you things are way way down in the mining industry and forestry products. Many suppliers to the mining and oil and gas industry are hurting, in big trouble or closed. Commodity prices for potash, uranium, iron ore and base metal concentrates are all at very low prices. Exploration is virtually non existent as no one is interested in investing big bucks in high risk. Only one doing OK really is gold which really doesn’t use rail.
I teach Mining Engineering and Geology. The graduating class from this past June was the first one ever where not one student was offered employment. One of my grads is working as a garbage man for the town. Yah, the economy is not all that healthy.
When I rode the Skeena, Jasper to Prince Rupert about 6-8 years ago, the VIA rail crew pointed out a Gold Ore mine in which they were loading Gold Ore into Gondolas with yellow covers. Could have been BS because that crew was rather strange in other ways. At the time I wondered how they could secure the ore if it wasn’t a secret to the rail crews. Also why they would use covered gondolas instead of ore cars. Strange story and I wonder if it was ever true.
In regards to Canada vs U.S. Would be nice if we finally connected Alaska by rail…#1. Then built a Western line across Alaska to a new deep water port and interchange with Russia / China via sea going barge #2. Improve our border crossings between Canada and Mexico to be a LOT more fluid #3. Get Mexico to expand more into Central America with trade agreements along with the U.S. and Canada #4. Connect Guatamala and Mexico
Just speculating - I suspect Gold Ore is probably 99+% other minerals that are probably a lot lighter than iron ore. As such you probably have to process the entire 80 or 90 tons of the Gold Ore to end up with an ounce of gold with the density of the Gold Ore being much less than iron ore, it cubes out before it weighs out, thus the use of ore jennys would not be appropriate. I could be totally mistaken.
Balt, I cannot lay my hands on any definite numbers, but I agree with you–the amount of gold that is in the ore is very small when compared with the total mass–yet it is profitable to mine, especially with what other desired minerals are found in the mass.
Gold bearing rock generally gets processed close to its location as the only way it makes the operation feasible. Otherwise the cost of transport for the remaining 99.9% of material that is waste renders it uneconomic. More likely the gondolas had some other ore, possibly lead-zinc-silver or copper, which is found in much higher concentrations. Traces of gold might be mixed in, which might be extracted later, but that would be a little bonus rather than the primary reason for mining an orebody.
I’m sure the crew was taking advantage of the yellow covers to support a good yarn. Maybe I should start one about using reefers to export permafrost.[;)]
Most all Gold mines have a mill on site. Gold can be freed through crushing, grinding and then chemical or gravity methods. Some mines do arrange to have their ore “custom milled” at a different mine site. This is usually in the order of 200 to 1,500 tons per day. It is possible that, were a railroad handy nearby and just happened to be going that way then it could be transported by rail.
I worked at a gold mine in Northern Ontario that received shipment’s from a mine in Quebec for “custom milling”. It was trucked in. It was a Godsend as for a period of time it was a primary source of income.
If it was what we call “VG” or visible gold then no way it gets shipped unless under armed guard. It woud be milled on site. Those types of deposits are rare and even rarer today as all the easy to find stuff has been mined. Gold mines today are in the order of 4-10 GRAMS per ton. It is not visible gold. That is roughly 1/8 to 1/3 of a ounce per TON.
What you saw was likely a base metal, probably a massive sulphide, concentrate. It would be Ziinc, Lead, Iron, Copper, Cobalt and other metallic elements in a concentrate form. This would definitely contain precious metals of gold, silver and platinum but the whole concentrate needs to go to a smelter and refinery before you get anything.
We do ship and sell our concentrate to China for processing. Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting ships concentrate by rail in gondolas. These would have to be covered so the concentrate doesn’t go flying out of the gon’s in transit. HBM&S shut down their own big smelter in Flin Flon mostly due to the Kyoto Accord ( now expired) but also because the smelter would have to be completely refurbished under today’s environmental standards. You can easily see the line of politics throughout this whole thing.
At one of our local stores here in town you can purchase canned pears and fruit cocktail that come from China! Now just 3 or 4 ca
John Kneiling used to write about oranges from Israel being sold in New York City instead of those from Florida. He used it as an example of dysfunctional surface (rail) transport, even on the East Coast where there were several major north-south lines. Back then he was right, too.
Railroads are only one form of transportation. While coal and CBR are down, new oil and gas pipelines are being built. Has trucking’s share of general freight gone up? What about waterways? You need to show that all freight transport is down before you cane make conclusions about the overall economy.
Your funny…
I think most of us were referring to how the Federal Reserve reaches it’s conclusions on the Economy. I can’t guess who taught you the above but generally they are incorrect. They generally use railroad car loads for the Beige Book NOT pipeline anything, NOT barge anything. I am not sure about Trucking it’s been over 22 years since I supported PhD Economists on a Economic Analysis staff. That Economics Staff as well used railroad carload reporting as a primary measure of the economy. I don’t remember them using trucking either but I could have missed it.
Pipeline plus Waterway combined have less share of transportation than the rails do. Plus I believe the railways reporting on traffic is much more reliable than the above two. So thats why I suspect they exclude pipelines and internal waterways.
You can read the Federal Reserve Beige Book yourself, it is posted online.
Please show me or highlight the areas where it refers to Barge or Pipeline Traffic, if you can find it. I only see Railroad carloads referenced as well as container loads referenced at ports.
Extractive industries are always boom and bust. At least in Canada you have health care.-Ouibejumn
Having been in the mining industry for 40 years I am well aware of the boom/bust cycles in the mining industry, however mining programs in colleges and universities that the companies dole out millions to support, ours no exception, with not one grad being offered employment is rather surprising. It’s very scary.
Yes we do have health care. In a fully developed mature economy with only 35 million people on the second largest land mass in the world with 60% of the worlds known natural resources it’s easy for governments to afford but yet it’s far from ideal for the individual.
Give it all another twenty years and there will be only one guy going to work to push a button and everything happens. What do we do? The machines will figure that out as well.
It can carry 18,000 TEU (9,000 forty foot containers). With only 26 total crew members! Including the cooks! This ship type is amazingly efficient.
I’ll estimate the charge for moving a container from China to North America at $2,000 US. If there are 40,000 pounds of canned pears in the container that works out to five cents per pound. It’s next to nothing.
This makes the Chinese cannary “Virtually” in North America. I checked, Del Monte canned pears go for $1.81/pound at Walmart. Five cents per pound for transportation across the Pacific is but 2.8% of the retail sale price. As I said, the transportation cost from China is next to nothing. The Chinese production is virtually in North America because of the efficiency in transporting the pears.
Railroads are only one form of transportation. While coal and CBR are down, new oil and gas pipelines are being built. Has trucking’s share of general freight gone up? What about waterways? You need to show that all freight transport is down before you cane make conclusions about the overall economy.
Your funny…
I think most of us were referring to how the Federal Reserve reaches it’s conclusions on the Economy. I can’t guess who taught you the above but generally they are incorrect. They generally use railroad car loads for the Beige Book NOT pipeline anything, NOT barge anything. I am not sure about Trucking it’s been over 22 years since I supported PhD Economists on a Economic Analysis staff. That Economics Staff as well used railroad carload reporting as a primary measure of the economy. I don’t remember them using trucking either but I could have missed it.
Pipeline plus Waterway combined have less share of transportation than the rails do. Plus I believe the railways reporting on traffic is much more reliable than the above two. So thats why I suspect they exclude pipelines and internal waterways.
You can read the Federal Reserve Beige Book yourself, it is posted online.
I fully agree that grocery retail is a penny business. Walmart’s margin may be 25.33% overall, but I’d wager (and I do wager) that it’s much less on groceries.
But! My point was, and remains, that the transportation cost for moving the canned pears across the wide Pacific approaches zero. The Chinese producer only needs to make up for a very slight ($0.05/pound) amount to be price competitive with domestically grown canned pears.
The Chinese obviously can do this little thing. As a result their production of canned pears is competitive with our production of canned pears. It’s feasible to import canned pears because of the transportation efficiencies of ocean shipping. That was the point.