Line chart showing weekly on-highway diesel prices (all types) from the Energy Information Administration broken out by region.

Weekly carloads from the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) Rail Service Metrics. Each week, the seven Class I railroads submit originated and received carloads by 23 major commodity groups, such as grain, grain mill, primary forest products, chemicals, coal, containers, trailers, etc.

While the STB began collecting some service metrics from railroads (e.g., trains speeds, origin dwell, and terminal dwell) in October 2014, it did not start collecting carload data until March 2017 through a new rulemaking.

Basis reflects both local and global supply and demand forces. It is calculated as the difference between the local cash price and the futures price. It affects when and where many grain producers and shippers buy and sell grain. Many factors affect basis—such as local supplies, storage and transportation availability, and global demand—and they interact in complex ways. How changes in basis manifest in transportation is likewise complex and not always direct. For instance, an increase in current demand will drive cash prices up relative to future prices, and increase basis. At the same time, grain will enter the transportation system to fulfill that demand. However, grain supplies also affect basis, but will have the opposite effect on transportation. During harvest, the increase in the supply of grain pushes down cash prices relative to futures prices, and basis weakens, but the demand for transportation increases to move the supplies.

For more information on how basis is linked to transportation, see the story, "Grain Prices, Basis, and Transportation" (https://agtransport.usda.gov/stories/s/sjmk-tkh6), and links below for research on the topic.

This data has corn, soybean, and wheat basis for a variety of locations. These include origins—such as Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and many others—and destinations, such as the Pacific Northwest, Louisiana Gulf, Texas Gulf, and Atlantic Coast.

This is one of three companion datasets. The other two are grain prices (https://agtransport.usda.gov/d/g92w-8cn7) and grain price spreads (https://agtransport.usda.gov/d/an4w-mnp7). These datasets are separate, because the coverage lengths differ and missing values are removed (e.g., there needs to be a cash price and a futures price to have a basis price).

The cash price comes from the grain prices dataset and the futures price comes from the appropriate futures market, which is Chicago Board of Trade (CME Group) for corn, soybeans, and soft red winter wheat; Kansas City Board of Trade (CME Group) for hard red winter wheat; and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange for hard red spring wheat.

This dataset contains average weekly bids/offers ($/car) among grain shippers in the "secondary railcar auction market" for guaranteed rail freight in near and future months. Railroads auction freight in the "primary railcar auction market," and grain shippers can trade this freight among themselves in the secondary railcar auction market.

These railcar markets evolved to enable rail movements of grain to be more responsive to market pressures. Published tariff rates tend to reflect the most likely market conditions to prevail given historical precedence and future expectations; railroads adjust many of their tariff rates only once or twice per year in order to set longer term prices that account for their fixed assets and optimize their networks. Furthermore, railroads are required by law to give a 20-day notice prior to changing tariffs. Therefore, rail rates are more insulated than other modes from weekly market changes and unexpected events, including weather or transportation service disruptions. But in the short term, as new information enters the market, the optimal allocation of railcar supply with shipper demand may no longer be most efficiently allocated by the prices set by tariff rates alone. This was a characteristic of rail service prior to the late 1980’s when service was priced at the tariff rate and available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Forward-guaranteed railcar service contracts were an innovation first offered by railroads in the late 1980’s. These contracts offer guaranteed railcar deliveries within a specific time frame and serve as instruments against risk caused by unexpected events. They allow the supply of railcars to be continually reallocated among shippers through an auction bidding process as new information comes into the market, providing an alternative to first-come-first-served service purchased through tariff rates. There are two types of railcar auction markets—the primary market, in which service contracts are originally sold by railroads to shippers, and the secondary market, in which shippers resell service contracts among themselves. Sales in the primary market are administered by the railroads; sales in the secondary market are administered by third-party brokers.

For more information on this markets, see the feature article in the February 19, 2015 Grain Transportation Report (link provided below).

This story offers a view of agricultural imports and exports through U.S. ports.

This data is reported by USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). USDA's Export Sales Reporting Program monitors U.S. agricultural export sales on a daily and weekly basis. Export sales reporting provides a constant stream of up-to-date market information for 40 U.S. agricultural commodities sold abroad. A single statistic reveals the significance of the program: in a typical year, the program monitors more than 40 percent of total U.S. agricultural exports. The program also serves as an early alert on the possible impact foreign sales have on U.S. supplies and prices. The weekly U.S. Export Sales report is the most current available source of U.S. export sales data. The data is used to analyze the overall level of export demand, determine where markets exist, and assess the relative position of U.S. commodities in foreign markets.

The date field in export sales is weekly, based on the calendar year. However, the dataset also keeps track of marketing year export sales. Be cautious when aggregating the export sales data over the date variable to properly account for these factors.

The turn of the marketing year often falls on a different day of the week then the weekly calendar year reporting. In this case, FAS adds an additional row (two total) to the dataset for that calendar week. One row represents that week's values which fell in the previous marketing year, while the other row captures that week's values which fell in the new marketing year. The "Marketing Year Start or End" variable labels these rows as "ENDING MY" and "STARTING MY", respectively, and is otherwise empty.

This creates a double counting issue when aggregating some of the variables by calendar week. See our view, https://agtransport.usda.gov/d/885i-uek7, for an example of avoiding double counting to show total outstanding sales over time.

This page focuses in on containerized grain exports. It provides information on the amount of containerized grain exported over time, by different commodities. It also identifies the major containerized grain exporting ports and importing countries.

The Surface Transportation Board's Carload Waybill Sample is perhaps the most comprehensive dataset available on railroad movements and trends. More technically, it is a stratified sample of carload waybills for all U.S. rail traffic submitted by those rail carriers terminating 4,500 or more revenue carloads annually. See 49 C.F.R. §§ 1244.1 to 1244.5.

Waybill data have broad applications and usage in national railroad policy and regulations, such as rate cases, costing systems, productivity studies, exemption decisions, and analyses supporting regulations. Waybill data are used by transportation practitioners, consultants, and law firms in preparing verified statements to be submitted in formal proceedings before the Board or other public agencies. Various federal agencies use the Waybill Sample as part of their informational and decision-making framework, and many states use it as a source of information for developing state transportation plans.

STB creates the Public Use Waybill file from the confidential Waybill Sample file. See the attached documents for more information. The "Reference Guide" document contains additional details on the variables and Standard Transportation Commodity Codes (STCC). In the "Creation of the Public Use Waybill Sample" document, STB provides more detail on the public use sample and how it is created. There is also a map of Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Areas and a document describing the Waybill sampling instructions.

This page provides charts and data on the global container fleet, including statistics on the number of vessels, total capacity, and the number of idle vessels over time.