Since intermodal traffic is the transportation of finished goods, and because carload traffic can be a wider variety of works in progress, intermodal is more favorable as an economic indicator.
Warren Buffett once stated on CNBC, when asked to identify the single most important economic statistic he would choose if he was stranded on a desert island for a month and could only get one set of economic numbers, that his favorite indicator was freight traffic.
In any case, this is an economic data series that is certainly worth tracking. Let’s look to the most recent numbers.
The AAR reports that intermodal rail volume for the week ending November 2 totaled 264,264 units. That is a 17.7% increase from the same week last year. We compare rail traffic year over year because the series is not seasonally adjusted and can be very volatile. Additionally, we’ll use long moving averages in our charts to better convey the trends. It’s notable that this Y/Y increase was especially high because the comparable week of 2012 was affected by Hurricane Sandy.
The 10-week moving average of intermodal rail traffic is up 6.0% year over year. That is the highest it’s been since March.
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