north american railcar maker freightcar america inc posted thirdquarter results on monday executives commented on higher steel prices and the economic recovery on the earnings conference call similar to many other manufacturing companies we continue to face challenges related to the supply chain and raw material inflation specifically higher steel prices have persisted and appear to be having a temporary impact on order closings over the last 12 months we have seen steel prices appreciate by roughly 225 and steel is of course the largest input to our manufacturing cost in response to this our team is doing everything they can to protect margins mainly through a renewed focus on material cost reduction across the board passing through cost increases where possible and being more selective on the business we accept we continue to see healthy signs of recovery in the overall economy as well as the railcar industry over the last year freight volumes have largely recovered to prepandemic levels and railcars and storage have declined in each of the previous 15 months signaling an improved rail environment additionally higher scrap values continue to support the scrapping of older railcars we see this trend continuing for the foreseeable future further supporting an improved railcar replacement market however as jim noted we have seen higher raw material costs including steel in particular which has caused some of our customers and buyers in the market to pause and evaluate the inflationary environment this appears to have temporarily stretched the sales cycle and as you have heard from our other company  other companies in the space order activity in the current market can be characterized as somewhat choppy the good news is order inquiries remained very robust in the quarter in the third quarter of 2021 we booked 200 car orders compared to 1133 in the second quarter and 100 in the third quarter of 2020