(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on February 10, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The international part of the U.S. intermodal market will be “weak” for most of 2010 because U.S. consumer spending is still too slow to generate strong growth in imported containers, said a top official of Norfolk Southern Railway.
James Squires, the carrier’s chief financial officer, told a BB&T Capital Markets conference Feb. 10 that of the major freight traffic segments for NS “we have only one market that we expect to continue to be down this year, and that’s international intermodal.”
The NS track network sprawls across the Southeast and mid-Atlantic region, and reaches into the Northeast, Midwest and Mississippi valley. NS moves international box loads from the Atlantic coast into the Midwest, and takes handoff box traffic from western railroads to consumer centers in its eastern territory.
Squires said domestic intermodal loadings for NS grew five percent in the fourth quarter, and should keep growing solidly in 2010 by drawing container and trailer loads away from all-truck highway moves.
But he said the import-heavy international box traffic “is a market driven by the consumer and global trade patterns,” and “the international intermodal volumes are projected to be weak this year, as a result of continued weak consumer spending.”
NS’ volume in that international sector fell 30 percent for all of 2009 and 22 percent in the final quarter, said Squires. Now, “in our view it will take most of 2010 for this market to show any appreciable recovery.”