It can’t yet really be called a trend, but the volume of goods shipped between islands in Hawaii extended an upswing in the third quarter.

Young Brothers Ltd., Hawaii’s largest interisland cargo carrier, reported Thursday its shipping volume rose by 1.5 percent in the July-September period over the same three months last year.

The uptick followed a 0.8 percent increase in the second quarter which ended three prior consecutive quarters of small decreases ranging from 0.2 to 2.1 percent.

The third-quarter increase represented 479 more container/platform equivalents, or CPEs, hauled by Young Brothers barges. The company carried 32,843 CPEs in the third quarter, up from 32,364 in the same quarter last year.

For the first nine months of the year, the recent gains were just barely enough to erase what had been negative year-to-date volume at midyear.

“Although overall cargo volumes increased slightly in the third quarter, this increase was sufficient to push year-to-date volumes slightly into positive territory at 0.1 percent,” Roy Catalani, vice president of Young Brothers, said in a statement.

The report, which measures how much stuff — from retail merchandise and restaurant supplies to cars and construction materials — is shipped between Honolulu and six neighbor island ports on Young Brothers, is sometimes taken as a rough barometer of neighbor island economic growth because the company handles a large portion of goods that are used for services or consumed on the Big Island, Maui, Molokai, Kauai and Lanai.

The growth in the third quarter was uneven among islands and types of goods, according to the report.

Catalani said the growth was largely driven by vehicles shipped by automobile dealerships and construction materials. He also noted an increase in beverage shipments, possibly as a result of a surge in demand for bottled water created by the relatively large number of hurricanes that blew past the state in recent months.

Types of cargo that were shipped in lower volumes in the third quarter included construction equipment and utility company supplies that Catalani said could have been because there was an unusually high level of such shipments last year following Tropical Storm Iselle, which caused major damage on the Big Island. Volume also was down for agricultural cargo, which includes farm crops shipped to Honolulu, by 5.4 percent to 1,960 CPEs in the third quarter from 2,071 CPEs a year earlier.

By island, cargo volume rose at four of six neighbor island ports. The biggest gain on a percentage basis was at Nawiliwili on Kauai where volume rose 4.5 percent to 6,660 CPEs in the recent quarter from 6,376 CPEs a year earlier.

Kawaihae harbor on Hawaii island received a 3.4 percent increase in CPEs to 5,353 from 5,177.

The busiest neighbor island port, Kahului, saw a 1.6 percent gain in CPEs to 11,757 from 11,570.

Molokai’s harbor in Kaunakakai eked out a 1.2 percent gain in CPEs to 1,520 from 1,501.

Volume declined at Hilo harbor by 2.9 percent to 8,526 CPEs from 8,785, and at Kaumalapau harbor on Lanai by 5.3 percent to 1,344 from 1,420.