The 1st statistics for 2008 show traffic originated by major US railroads (total cars loaded)through week ending Jan. 19 to have increased 5.6% from a 2007 similar time period.
Trailers and containers increased 3.0% over 2007, with containers up 4.1% and trailers down 0.9%.
Source: February 2008 Railway Age
I don’t know about that I was on the road extra board and I was sitting home for 4-5 days between runs, so I jumped in the yard as it was turning better lately I’ve been doubling quite often and work pretty much every day
I can say that the CSX Nashville side has been hit pretty hard since June of 2007. Traffic has steadily declined and 45 people have been on the furlough board since September of 2007. Plus we currently have a curfew in effect on both the Chattonogga and Birmingham sides for the next 4 weeks.
There is no recession. In truth, there has not been a recession since 1982, when we recovered from the disastrous Carter years. We have had periods of slower growth, as we are having today. But no recession. Recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. It isn’t happening and is not about to happen. Most of the people who complain about “the economy” have never experienced a recession, so they don’t know better.
Correction: There actually was a mild recession for eight months in 2001. However over the entire year, the economy showed positive growth.
Well I really don’t know what recession in railroad terminlogy means but something must be going on at least with CSX.
I do know that things are moving really slow on the Louisville Division. Part of the reason things are so slow is partly due to the two major Ford plants here in the Louisville area; production for Ford is slow. As it turns out many car buyers are looking towards the most cost efficient vehicle, instead of the big trucks and SUVs, which happens to be what the Ford plants here in Louisville produce.
I beleive the other reason why CSX is runing so slow is because of the election year.
There have be several temporary furloughs on the division 70 people have been furloughed so far. They have also cut several jobs off of the road and yard extra board. [:(] Trains have been getting shorter and yard traffic has taken a huge nose dive.
…You might get by technically saying there is no recession now but I’m sure there are 10’s of thousands of workers and businesses that might have a very real different oppinion than the one just posted above…Shocking, the businesses closing in our area currently and just recently.
I believe you will find many of us on here are “old” enough to have seen perhaps a dozen recessions.
Pie in sky we don’t have now, for sure.
Yes modelcar there is a slowdown and it happens every few years. Some areas of the country and segments of the business community suffer more that others. I was born in 1932 and was a witness to those difficulties, the severity of which have not ever been duplicated. I have also seen slowdowns and have been laid off from my work as a result. But this country has so much going for it that we always come back stronger than before. I learned from my experiences to adjust and to be positive, which has served me well.
I’ve been part of the work force since 1972, Quentin, and can’t ever remember “pie in the sky”.
My dad is 86 and he can’t remember such a period, either. We both can remember “leaner” times than normal, though.
Different industries are affected in different ways during both Bull and Bear periods. If you live in an agricultural or industrial area, things aren’t as good as they were in other time frames. Industrial jobs have been lost due to outsourcing to other states or countries that offer cheaper labor or to automation (robotics). In ag, small farms have become part of larger farms and most of the work is being done by machines. Foreign imports have eaten away at a lot of U.S. jobs. There are a lot of ITs unemployed since the Internet Boom collapsed in the late 1990s, which was inevitable.
Can’t complain right now because there are always those who have it worse.
The news media has accurately predicted 32 of the last 2 recessions.
There are 2 critical points that have to be considered here. 1 is the time period under consideration, the other is the tendency to play with semantics. If you work in transportation, there DEFINITELY is a recession. Look at any measure of freight tonnage in 2005 vs 2007 and you’ll see steady delcine.
In looking at Jan 07 vs Jan 08 you may see modest growth. The problem is that the actual decline occurred between Jan 06 and Jan 07. Freight tonnage began to drop in early 06 and we’ve been living with those depressed volumes since. Its kind of like falling off of a cliff, hitting bottom and then a few minutes later saying, well, we haven’t fallen any further in the last few minutes. That’s what the last year has been.
From 03 to 04 and then again from 04 to 05, RR’s were seeing record growth in many commodities including intermodal. They had 3 yrs of growth at 9% annual compounded rates. In 2007 Union Pacific was nearly flat and they benefitted a lot from share-shift based on BNSF decision to exit the NACS container fleet and rail trailers. On the other hand, the intermodal giant, BNSF, was down about 3% (06vs 07).
Compare the Morgan Stanley Freight index for 2004 to 2007. 2004 was the best year in the last 15 for freight demand. 2007 was among the 3 worst.
You’re right that things haven’t gotten much worse, we were in the basement in 2007 and we’re still there in 2008, but we haven’t climbed even the first step toward getting out. Until housing gets healthy transportation will suffer and with the announcement yesterday that building permit applications are at a 16 yr low level, I don’t see that coming soon. In the meantime, expect to see idle tractors, trailers and strings of box cars, lumber flats, etc parked and idle (or being cut up as is the case w/ CN for much of the last year.) High scrap steel p
Hi CSXrules,
It’s funny, I commute along a 25 mile stretch of a CSX line between Augusta, GA and Greenville, SC. Yesterday I noticed a huge ‘convoy’ of specialized CSX cars and it looked like they were rebuilding a second track (are these called sidings?) that has been rusting away for years. If they’re there today I’ll stop and take a couple of pics. Also, I’ve noticed the traffic volume along this line has increased substantially in the last year or so.
I’m not sure what this has to do with recession, but I thought it was relevant to your post.
Doug
Tghere might not be an offical resesstion but when i am sitting home 40 plus hrs when last year I was turn in 16 to 20 hrs then things have slowed down Larry
one thing to keep in mind, is that the Rail industry is not monolithic…it aint the same everywhere. With things like the Meridian speedway getting improvements, it is reasonable to believe more traffic would be routed there and away from other places…lots of other seeminly small effects can cause traffice to increase or stay the same on some routes while decreasing on others…and the point about specific ford plants being in a slowdown while others are at normal production can be repeated for numerous industries.
I am just wondering if some of the expansion and improvement plans the RR’s have embarked upon are being slowed down or reconsidered in light of the slowing economy…or, are they already so far behind in capacity that they still need to just plain catch up?
Strange, the people we hear say there is no recession seem to be retired on their massive Government pensions, or they are pulling down 80 grand a year, talk to someone who has all their life savings in 401’s or RRSP’s and see if there is a recession, I’m glad the railways are making a few bucks, gee, I wonder if the oil companies are feeling the results of this non-recession.
…Well I see all the comments and everyone probably witnesses different situations where they are located.
It is rather evident our national economy is grinding to a slow drag and none of us know yet if we are in…have started to enter, or where we are as far as a recession is concerned. When we can look back then we will know.
This area has been heavy in automotive transportation products for decades. Anderson, In. {mostly GM}, produced in excess of 25,000 jobs…GM is almost non existent now in that community.
Here in Muncie…BWA produced over 6,000 jobs at one time…The half mile long plant will close next year. Facilities to be razed. Chevrolet transmission plant located here for decades, now rubble…Ball Corp…exited. The story continues on and on. Much of the volume of the above jobs is now accomplished for very small wages overseas or Mexico.
Most of the above has been a transitional change at local employees expenses.
Now, and recently…restaurants closing…some stores in our rather large mall closing…Auto dealerships, well it goes without saying how all the downturn is effecting those businesses. Scores of new homes unsold as well as preowned units…
Balance of payments situations of exports and imports in our country are draining our resources.
And now a serious downturn of demand of what is left for employment in this country is producing thousands of layoffs. We really don’t know yet how deep it will really fall. Of course we’ll hope for the turnaround…How soon that happens, we really don’t know yet.
I really don’t know what we should call it right now, but those out of work probably can find a name for it pretty quick.
Well, I just saw ‘an unexpected drop in unemployment rate…’ 4.9%
Modelcar,
Actually the US Balance of Trade is getting much better. The cheaper dollar has much to do with it but there are other reasons.
Also, while everyone talks about cheaper labor costs abroad, that’s only part of the picture and doesn’t normally apply to companies who are manufacturing in the EU. The second major cost consideration that is driving companies to manufacture more abroad is that the US Corporate Income Tax is the highest in the developed world. And US companies aren’t taxed on their profits from their foreign plants until they return the funds to the US (which is also the standard practice in most countries that I’m aware of). So it behooves US companies to make the goods abroad which they then sell in the foreign market and then invest much of the foreign profits into increasing production of their plants in the foreign market. Most economists will tell you that drastically cutting the US Corporate Income Tax would go a long way toward helping to curtail US manufacturing jobs going abroad. (In other words, beware of the politician who promises to sock it to business because “they don’t pay enough taxes” if you want to keep American jobs.) Of course, manufacturing today is highly automated compared to what it was 30 years ago. Cheap computers and ever developing software, which are also behind the rapid advances in robotics, have totally changed everything.
I’ve always said you can tell the state of the economy by how many trains are running, how full they are and long they are. Five years ago, CSX was running 50 trains a day here with second sections of many trains coming through. The intermodals were spiking 10,000’ and were loaded to the gills with containers. Today, the number of trains is less than 30. (forget second sections…the first sections barely have enough freight to pay the bills) The average train length has dropped drastically; trains that normally ran 6,000’ are now down to 3,000’ or less. The intermodals are running at less than 5,000’ and are having more and more empty flats/wells everyday. And then there are numerous furloughs/layoffs across the board. Not in a recession yet? Tell that to all the new hire conductors/engineers that are now trying to figure out how to pay the bills with no income. (not to mention the fact that I’ve had to personally watch all the jobs I’m qualified for in the IT field float overseas to India)
alphas:
Yes, certain months we do see improvements in the US Balance of Trade figures…but as we all know, for years, we’ve been “bleeding” value going the other way, and it will take “what kind of movements”, to even out the excesses for so many years.
Modelcar,
There’s one other point concerning the trade deficiet that isn’t well known. The US does a pretty good job of collecting import data but not with exports. In other words, the amount of US exports tends to be meaningfully under reported, especially exports to Canada. I’ve been out of the loop on this for a few years due to retirement but my understanding is that while data concerning US exports has improved, there is still a significant amount that gets missed.