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I watch the Baltic Dry Index to try and get a glimpse of shipping rates and such.
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The theory is that increases in shipping goods and materials are the the fore front good econimic news for companies that use the shipping services (Which is just about everyone). But as I understand it, the Baltic Dry Index is shipping, and not freight train and or truck transportation.
Does anyone know a good index that tracks rail or truck shipping?
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No clue about trucking or rail, but keep in mind the BDI is only bulk cargo, and it doesn't represent containers which are the bulk of cargo ships and absolutely in the toilet for the next few years.
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Jakensama Wrote:No clue about trucking or rail, but keep in mind the BDI is only bulk cargo, and it doesn't represent containers which are the bulk of cargo ships and absolutely in the toilet for the next few years.
Is there an index for containers?
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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Dustie Wrote:Jakensama Wrote:No clue about trucking or rail, but keep in mind the BDI is only bulk cargo, and it doesn't represent containers which are the bulk of cargo ships and absolutely in the toilet for the next few years.
Is there an index for containers?
Buffet just answered half the question this morning on ABC. He said he's watching the freight train index (for more reasons then just his BNI stock).
I guess the question is, how many of those containers go from ships directly to trucks (if many), and how many go to ships to trains.
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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Dustie Wrote:Dustie Wrote:Jakensama Wrote:No clue about trucking or rail, but keep in mind the BDI is only bulk cargo, and it doesn't represent containers which are the bulk of cargo ships and absolutely in the toilet for the next few years.
Is there an index for containers?
Buffet just answered half the question this morning on ABC. He said he's watching the freight train index (for more reasons then just his BNI stock).
I guess the question is, how many of those containers go from ships directly to trucks (if many), and how many go to ships to trains.
Actually the question is "what freight train index does he watch?" I cant find one. Is there one?
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I don't know. I can't find it either. I suppose it might be somthing you pay for through value line, or read in a transportation trade journal/publication.
Vllad?
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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pff, buffet... what does THAT guy know?
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Their is no doubt that if you want know how the economy is doing watching bill counts of the rail and truck carriers is the way to go. They see recoveries and down turns way before economist do. We can usually tell if we are heading into a recession 6 months before the GNP numbers come out.
The problem is I can't find any information on this for public consumption.
The best place I would think is the NITL
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I get this crap in my inbox all the time but all of it is internal info. Another way to go is to follow the NVO container traffic. They see the data even before Rail and Truck carriers. I can't find a public NVO traffic data site though.
I highly recommend becoming a member of NITL if you can. Especially if you invest in stocks. You will see signs of unhealthy companies coming through shipping channels way before any financials are posted. As soon as a company starts having trouble paying his trucking company word and the street gets out fast. If a company has a bad logistics supply chain its time to get as far away from them as possible.
You can usually even see where a company is heading before his financials show it.
For example if a company usually paid their transportation bills with in 30 day terms and then suddenly ends up with a quarter of 45 to 60 days either they have a bad CFO or things are getting shakey. Their quarterly statements may not yet reflect it but the company may take a bad turn. Either that or their statements are bullshit. By the second quarter of that you will find rumblings of transportation providers starting to tighten the noose. Its time to walk away from that stock.
Their are few absolutes in the world today. Death and Taxes are two of them. The third is "always make sure your carriers are a secured lendor".
Carriers always get paid no matter how bad the company is. Carriers have lien rights on all the goods in their system. You can't make money even going through a Chapter 11 when the carriers have all of your goods on their trucks. Even the courts can't get you your freight back. It is the last real place where control is 9/10ths of the law. Lets find out just how much money you can make when your carrier holds all of your goods.
If you ever attend a bankruptcy court the very first thing a judge says in a Chapter 11 is deal with the supply chain side of things. If you don't have that lined up he sends you back to get your carrier lendors straightened out. With out that fixed you might as well re-file a chapter 7.
The other factor is once you piss off the carriers you are pretty much fucked. Even if you are Microsoft, if you screw your credit with carriers you might as well shut the doors right now. If you screw FedEx, UPS won't extend you credit and visa versa. You better have a ton of cash.
The above is why you watch those groups in order to monitor not just our economy but individual companies. They are good barameters to keep if you know what to look for.
Vllad.
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Dustie Wrote:Is there an index for containers?
There are a few indicies for containers but they are traded differently and have lots more sizes
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<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.vhss.de/contex.php">http://www.vhss.de/contex.php</a><!-- m --> (in german but you should get it)
Theres two we use.
Watching either Index is kinda misleading as they are composite indexes of the various sizes which are performing at very different levels.
Baltic Exchange Dry Index TM 3018 (DOWN 89)
Baltic Exchange Capesize Index TM 5037 (DOWN 299)
Baltic Exchange Panamax Index TM 2914 (UP 17)
Baltic Exchange Supramax Index TM 1782 (UP 33)
Baltic Exchange Handysize Index TM 779 (UP 13)
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Thanks Jake, that Harpex is very interesting. If I had a way back machine, it appears that it showed the recession well in advance of the September 2008 was crash.
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This is what I've found so far:
This article:
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/vie...id/3344178
mentions railfax reports: http://railfax.transmatch.com/
I have no idea how good the info is. Hopefully Vllad/Jake can shed some light.
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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You can't look at the rail alone. That would be stupid. You have to look at the combination of Rail and Truck combined. Their are years where one will see a decline and one will increase. Especially with Rail. It is the cheapest way to move goods in the US but it also the slowest so intermodal isn't even touched by some supply chains.
The other thing is to always throw out the first quarter.
January, February and March numbers you might as well just toss when trying to have any logical discussion.
No one ships anything in those months no matter how good the year is. Christmas to Easter is dead. Inventories are full with no potential sales looming.
Peak is always August to November. You can't make any presumptions until the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
Vllad
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Vllad Wrote:You can't look at the rail alone. That would be stupid. You have to look at the combination of Rail and Truck combined. Their are years where one will see a decline and one will increase. Especially with Rail. It is the cheapest way to move goods in the US but it also the slowest so intermodal isn't even touched by some supply chains.
The other thing is to always throw out the first quarter.
January, February and March numbers you might as well just toss when trying to have any logical discussion.
No one ships anything in those months no matter how good the year is. Christmas to Easter is dead. Inventories are full with no potential sales looming.
Peak is always August to November. You can't make any presumptions until the 2nd and 3rd quarters.
Vllad
Is it possible that the issue with getting truck data is that its too diffuse? It might be easy to gather info on rail shipments but harder to keep track of million of truck shipments..???
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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No question trucking data is harder to compile from outside the industry because marketing departments do to much spin. Some of it for good reason.
YRC for example:
The company is going down the toilet and they are trying to fix it. However in the process of doing so people stop giving them freight for fear that things will get worse and you end up with a bunch of freight in their system when they go under. (this is really bad)
So with poor numbers (more then just revenue) customers give you less freight. It is a spiraling effect that most carriers never recover from.
Therefore raw data is hard to find that is accurate.
With that being said the general data is out there. I am on the look out for a regular place to find those for ya.
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"I am on the look out for a regular place to find those for ya."
Sounds like a trap Yoda, I'd be cautious!
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That would be great Vllad. Every slow down I have seen in the past 20 years was foreseen by trucking companies, and every recovery as well. Core materials and goods start shipping way before earning reports.
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"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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Dustie Wrote:http://www.aar.org/Home/AAR2/NewsAndEven...02009.ashx Looks like we're not going down anymore, at least.
Compared to 2008, we're boned (year to year comparisons are all way down, of course).
Compared to previous months, we're showing improvement.
However, the month to month improvement we're showing seems close to the seasonal improvement we normally see at this time. (That is, the charts that show us going up also show us going up at about the same rate that we did in previous years.)
It'll be interesting to see if the seasonal uptick turns into a complete recovery or if it just falls off again in the spring.
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The best months of the year are always Sept to November. You won't know how bad we are still off until late December and January. Either way over all this year should remain at negative growth for the year. Those numbers look very much like our own. We are operating at 2003 levels so if we start out January at very comparible numbers to 2009 then we have more of the same to look forward to for 2010.
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That's good to know that the numbers look like your own numbers. It might at least mean that it's a decent source of rail information for those of use outside the shipping industry.
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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The numbers for container movement is very much the same as well.
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I have to figure out how to attach Excel Spread sheets so I can show surface numbers. Is that possible?
Vllad
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Here is my attached excel file test. Everyone should look at this excel file. It contains very important information.
Dustie.xls (Size: 14 KB / Downloads: 51)
"Hamilton is really a Colossus to the anti republican party. Without numbers he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth when he comes forward there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries having begun the attack he has the advantage of answering them and remains unanswered himself. For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillas" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
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Mine is the "no good" vote. The "Great" and "Fantastic" votes come from the 87 imaginary voices inside Dustie's head. 
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Vllad Wrote:The best months of the year are always Sept to November. You won't know how bad we are still off until late December and January. Either way over all this year should remain at negative growth for the year. Those numbers look very much like our own. We are operating at 2003 levels so if we start out January at very comparible numbers to 2009 then we have more of the same to look forward to for 2010.
Vllad
I think this is a great point. The fact of the matter is that this bubble burst (like others before it), is a correction to reality. I would hope that that correction isn't all the way down to 2003 levels, but it might be. So much of our economic growth in the last 10 to 15 years was based on invalid expectations of growth stimulated by the 2 bubbles (Internet and then housing).
If you draw a line trend line prior to the internet bubble, and extend it to 2009, the market is still over priced.
Maul, the Bashing Shamie
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