Railroad news: AAR reports railroad freight traffic volume is up for fourth straight week
Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/26/2007
WASHINGTON—Freight traffic volumes on United States railroads for the week ending November 17 were up overall compared to the same week last year for the fourth straight week, according to data recently released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR).Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 340,077 cars, representing an increase of 1.7 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago, said the AAR. Carload freight loadings were up 3.6 percent in the West and down slightly at 0.6 percent in the East.
Intermodal traffic was off slightly from last year with a total of 244,829 trailers and containers loaded during the week, which marked a 2.3 percent drop-off. The AAR said that container volume was down 2.6 percent, and trailer loadings were down 4.5 percent.
Another indicator railroad volumes are picking up is that the AAR’s estimated total weekly volume of 35.8 billion ton-miles, which was up 2.6 percent from last year.
Of the 19 carload commodity groups tracked by the AAR, nine were up from last year, with grain up 15.8 percent, motor vehicles and equipment up 15.6 percent, and chemicals up 6.2 percent. Farm products excluding grain were down 10.1 percent, and pulp, paper and allied products were off by 17.3 percent.
The AAR said that cumulative volume for the first 46 weeks of 2007 totaled 15,077,812 carloads, which was down 2.6 percent from 2006. Trailers or containers were down 2.1 percent at 10,723,649 and the total volume of an estimated 1.56 trillion ton-miles was down 1.2 percent year over year.
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