United States railroad traffic has a tough January

Staff -- Logistics Management, 2/8/2007

WASHINGTON—A combination of winter storms and ongoing weakness in the housing and automotive sectors saw United States rail carload traffic drop 6.8 percent—or 112,428 carloads—to 1,553,060 carloads in the first five weeks of 2007 comaored to the same timeframe in 2006, according to data released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) today.

The AAR also reported that rail intermodal traffic dropped 1.6 percent—or 18,542 trailers and containers—to 1,105,792 units in January. Intermodal represented roughoy 23 percent of all Class I revenue. In January intermodal trailers volume was down 12.7 percent to 239,979 and containers were up 1.9 percent to 865,993.

The AAR also reported that of the 19 carload commodity groups it tracks, 17 of them were down year-over-year. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 21.8 percent—or 22,977 carloads—82,309 carloads. Crushed stone, sand, and gravel were down 18.7 percent—or 19,875 carloads—to 86,557 carloads. And coal was down 2.3 percent—or 15,750 carloads—to 682,294 carloads. Only food and kindred products and chemical products showed year-over-year increases at 2.5 percent and 3.0 percent, respectively.

The AAR also reported that cumulative loadings for the first four weeks of the year totaled 1,235,173 carloads, which represents a 6.6 percent decline from 2006. And the 879,500 trailers or containers reported year-to-date is off 1.5 percent, as is total volume of an estimated 125.3 billion ton-miles, which is down 5.4 percent from last year.

Total railroad volume for the month of January was estimated at 157.6 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was down 5.6 percent from last year.