Railroad news: AAR reports freight volumes are up 5.1 percent
Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/16/2007
WASHINGTON—Freight traffic volumes on United States railroads for the week ending November 10 were up overall compared to the same week last year, according to data released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) yesterday.Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 342,929 cars, representing an increase of 5.1 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago, said the AAR. Carload freight loadings were up 9.6 percent in the West and down slightly at 0.6 percent in the East.
Intermodal traffic was down a bit from last year with a total of 244,060 trailers and containers loaded during the week, which marked a 0.8 percent drop-off. The AAR said that container volume was up 0.3 percent, and trailer loadings were down 4.5 percent
And in another sign that railroad volumes are getting back on track was the AAR’s estimated total weekly volume of 36.2 billion ton-miles, which was up 6.2 percent from last year.
Of the 19 carload commodity groups tracked by the AAR, 10 were up from last year, with motor vehicles and equipment up 16.1 percent, chemicals up 5.6 percent, grain up 13.8 percent, and metallic ores up 17.9 percent. Farm products excluding grain were down 15.1 percent, and lumber and wood products were off by 3.4 percent.
The AAR said that cumulative volume for the first 45 weeks of 2007 totaled 14,787,735 carloads, which was down 2.7 percent from 2006. Trailers or containers were down 2.1 percent at 10,478,820 and the total volume of an estimated 1.5 trillion ton-miles was down 1.3 percent year over year.
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