Service Center Intake, Shipments and Inventory in November

Total service center carbon steel shipments in November decreased by 763,700 tons to 2.979 million tons. This was mainly due to a decrease in shipping days from 23 to 19. On a tons per day basis (t/d) shipments also decreased from 162,700 in October to 156,800. In the eleven years 2004 through 2014 November shipments on average have been 3 percent less than October. This year November was down 3.7 percent from October, we can expect December shipments to be down about another 14 percent when the data is released next month. Figure 1 demonstrates the seasonality of service center shipments and why comparing a month’s performance with the previous month is usually misleading. For this reason in the SMU analysis we always consider year over year changes.