August was a busy month for America’s railroads, according to the Association for American Railroads. Traffic spiked up, as often happens during the month. More importantly, August traffic was 11% higher than a year ago (the same gain as reported in July):
Carloads (think bulk materials like coal, grains, minerals, and chemicals plus autos) are up about 6% over 2009:
Intermodal traffic (think trailers and containers) is up almost 20%, thus returning to 2008 levels:
If you dig through the numbers, I think you’ll find that metal shipments were the largest type of shipment showing a rise. Why should metals be rising more than food, chemicals etc.?
Are most of the metal shipments composed of scrap metal heading to ports to be exported to Communist China?