Food loadings up 0.4% in April
June 14, 2012
The food outlook continues to weaken despite an upward revision to Q1 volumes. Food loadings in April rose in line with expectations, up 0.4% from March, to 8.478 million loadings. February volumes were revised significantly higher, but March was relatively unchanged. Year-over-year growth has hovered near the -2% mark for the last seven months, down 2.4 % in April.
Analysis
This is a more non-cyclical market segment and generally stays within a narrow band. People always have to eat. The food cycle should now be at the point where we will see growth well below industry averages. We anticipate that volume levels will move up slowly during 2012 but are looking to stall during early 2013.
Recent history
As stated above, food movements tend to be less cyclical than other markets. On an annual basis volumes grew between 1% and 2% from 2008 to 2011.Food freight was relatively stable from 2006 to 2008. Volumes were surprisingly strong throughout 2008. During the downturn volumes only had 2 quarters of significant quarter-over-quarter declines. This was during the middle of 2009. It was also the only truck segment to show growth in 2009, up 2.1%. Volumes rebounded solidly during 2010, but only recorded growth of 1.4% for the full year. Volumes slowed throughout 2011 but started the year at a high level so annual growth improved to 1.9%. Despite the uptick in April, loadings have yet to convince us that they have bottomed out.
Outlook
We don’t expect to see significant quarter-over-quarter increases in loadings until late 2013, and year-over-year growth will not return to positive territory until we are well into 2013. After several years of growth, food loadings are looking to fall 1.7% in 2012 before turning (slightly) positive and growing 0.8% in 2013 and 1.8% in 2014. After having several months of seeing the 2012 forecast lowered, this month saw the 2013/2014 outlook move lower.
NOTE:
Food Products are movements of processed foods. This includes such items as cut meats, dairy products, canned goods, milled grain products, sugars, and beverages. It does not include farmed crops or livestock. FTR’s data is seasonally adjusted and measures both short and long-haul OTR segments.
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