A quick look at freight traffic via railroads indicates no surprising changes in our economic landscape. However, the numbers do reaffirm some interesting trends. Total rail freight volume for the fourth week of January 2008 was estimated at 32.4 billion ton-miles, a decrease of 1.2% from one year ago. Some of the decline is attributed to severe weather conditions early in the month, especially in the eastern states.

What bears special concern in the Association of American Railroads rail freight traffic report are the few categories of freight that are showing significant reductions in rail freight loading volume when compared to 2007. Coal coke, which is used mainly as an industrial fuel showed a major decline in loading volume of 36.8%. This could be due in part to a shifting away from hydrocarbon fuels. Lumber and wood products loadings declined by a significant 22.35%, which does not bode well for the construction and furnishing trades. Primary forest product loadings dropped by 19.9% which further indicates a slow start to the coming building season.

Constantly on the lookout for those things that subtly show potential, my keen eye has spied a possible giant upcoming in the kingdom of the minerals. Enter the humble player tellurium, a mineral byproduct of copper production. This relatively unknown mineral currently is not mined in any commercial sense. It's primarily derived through a recovery process applied to the sludge from copper refining. What is the interest in tellurium and why should you care about it? Well, here's what the State Geologist of Arizona has revealed to me.

According to Jack Lifton at Resource Investor, this fall Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Samsung "will introduce flash memory replacements ... that can be used, erased, and used again indefinitely, but, rather than being crystalline silicon technology based, are made from tellurium based glasses composed of germanium, antimony, and tellurium." What could this possibly mean to a sharp-minded investor? It means that there quite possibly resides an untapped multi-mega fortune in copper refining sludge. In 2000, tellurium marketed for just under $4.00 a pound. Last year, the mineral had reached $96 and is currently around $100 a pound.

Additionally, First Solar Inc., (NASDAQ: FSLR) of Phoenix, which went public last fall, is using cadmium tellurium in the production of photovoltaic cells. Its public statement regarding the use of the material is as follows: "Cadmium tellurium ... has the potential to deliver competitive conversion efficiencies with approximately 1% of the semiconductor material used by traditional crystalline silicon solar modules." That's one percent of the current weight and one percent of the current volume. Imagine the solar conversion capacity currently available reduced in size by 10%. Yeah baby, now that's potential!

Some stick-in-the-mud people may still want to turn their noses up at the realities of solar conversion and its future. That's fine with me. I'll just watch someone else get rich while I'm sitting in the sunshine.