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How much has North American freight increased over the past year?

Good news! The Department of Transportation says that transborder freight between the US, Canada, and Mexico has recovered strongly from the pandemic:

That's a nice infographic, all ready for newspapers and TV news to copy and publish without thinking about it. But wait. What's that footnote in tiny type at the bottom? Let me put on my reading glasses:

Ah, of course. Let's go ahead and fix that:

That's more like it. Assuming, of course, that you want to give people an honest idea of how much North American freight has really increased over the past year.

14 thoughts on “How much has North American freight increased over the past year?

  1. DaBunny

    Kevin, might want to fix that title? I think it should be "How much has North American *trade* increased over the past year?"

    You have "How much has North American increased over the past year?"

    1. Ken Rhodes

      And by the way, it's not at all clear that transborder freight is equivalent to trade.

      Wiley Coyote, in Las Cruces New Mexico, orders a safe to drop on Roadrunner's head. He orders it from the Acme Manufacturing Company, Safe and Lock Division, forty miles down the road in El Paso. Acme manufactures the body of the safe in their Winnipeg plant, and ships the 300 pound steel body from Winnipeg to El Paso. Acme has a plant across the river in Juarez that manufactures locks and locking mechanisms and assembles safes. So Acme sends the 300 pound safe body over the bridge to their Juarez plant for final assembly. The finished safe, now weighing 340 pounds, comes back across the bridge to El Paso, where Wiley picks it up from the Acme showroom.

      This purchase of the intended instrument of Roadrunner's demise has resulted in transborder shipments totaling 940 pounds, but I hardly see that as emblematic of "trade" between countries of North America.

      1. Ken Rhodes

        I hate it when somebody misspells my name.

        So Mr. Coyote, please accept my apology. I just lost my head for a moment. I know your name is spelled Wile E. Coyote.

      2. lawnorder

        It's true that supply chains mean the same goods sometimes cross borders several times. However, this was happening last year too. Unless the "multiplier" has increased over the last year, the increase in trans-border freight is real. The amount of goods changing hands may be less than the total tonnage of freight recorded for the reasons you describe, but an increase in that tonnage really does represent an increase in the tonnage of goods traded across borders.

  2. different_name

    "But then, I suddenly the whole thing."

    More seriously, can we get the WaPo to hire Kevin as a graphical fact checker? He'd only be allowed to respond with charts.

  3. skeptonomist

    This is actually more complicated than just correcting for overall CPI inflation. Most of the increase was in the last 7 months or so - was that a real increase in goods (say tonnage) or just in value? A good part of the increase seems to be in pipeline transport, presumably mostly oil, which has gone up a great deal in price. If a large part of the CPI increase is in housing, that should probably not apply to the correction. Ideally you would apply a separate inflation factor to each type of goods.

    It would also be interesting to know the numbers in tonnage and/or volume (pipeline).

    1. Joseph Harbin

      Not sure how exchange rate adjustments are calculated. Maybe they're baked in to the numbers the DoT used, or maybe not at all. In any case, USD to other currencies have swung several percent over the past year.

    2. lawnorder

      The freight specifically measured was truck and rail freight. Pipeline transport would be another category, as would air freight and water freight.

  4. rick_jones

    So, was there a corresponding decrease in CO2e per kg of freight or have we also inadvertently celebrated an emissions increase?

  5. jdubs

    Considering that the makeup of North American trade products do not resemble the CPI basket of goods, adjusting for inflation doesnt provide an accurate value.

  6. PostRetro

    The value of the freight is irrelevant. the tonnage of the freight is more informative. A Kevin trend line over the past 3 years of tonnage by month would show just where we are in stuff moving around.

    1. KenSchulz

      Even aggregate measures of tonnage would show composition effects, of course, as amounts of various commodities increased or decreased. A smallish increase in, say, Canadian nickel ingots imported could (literally!) outweigh a big drop in dimension lumber …

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