PRODUCER PRICES OF RAILROAD EQUIPMENT
PRODUCER PRICES OF RAILROAD EQUIPMENT
Producer Price Index: Railroad Equipment (monthly data, not seasonally adjusted)
Rail equipment represents a major cost to rail service providers.
| Price Index (Jan-92=100) | Aug-01 | Aug-02 |
|---|---|---|
| Public transit cars, all rebuilt cars, and all car parts | 113.5 | 112.3 |
| Public transit cars, all rebuilt cars, and all car parts percent change from same month previous year | 0.76 | -1.13 |
| Passenger and freight cars, new (excluding parts) | 116.1 | NA |
| Passenger and freight cars, new (excluding parts) percent change from same month previous year | -0.23 | NA |
| Locomotives and parts | 102.1 | 103.5 |
| Locomotives and parts percent change from same month previous year | -1.56 | 1.34 |
| All railroad equipment | 109.0 | 108.9 |
| All railroad equipment percent change from same month previous year | -0.23 | -0.08 |
NOTES: The current value is compared to the value from the same period in the previous year to account for seasonality.
Data from May 2002 to August 2002 are preliminary. Data not available for new passenger and freight cars for August 2002. The series presented on this page use an industry-based PPI, rather than the commodity-based PPI used for "Producer Prices of Key Transportation Inputs," because the industry-based PPI was less affected by these events.
The base period of the original index is June 1984. January 1992 is set to be the new reference point (=100) by dividing the values of the original index by the value of January 1992 in the original index. It is important to point out that this process changes only the reference point, and not the base period of the index because the weight structure of the index did not change.
Data for July 1996 to April 1997 for locomotives were affected by a strike at GM, and a revision of the BLS weighting scheme. Data for this period are anomalous, and are not depicted in the graph.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; September 13, 2002; available at: http://www.bls.gov/ppi/.