Railroad news: AAR says rail traffic a mixed bag

Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/30/2007

WASHINGTON—Freight traffic volumes on United States railroads for the week ending November 24 was a mixed bag compared to the same timeframe last year, according to data recently released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 290,424 cars, representing a slight decrease of 0.1 percent compared Thanksgiving week last year, said the AAR. Carload freight loadings were up 1.2 percent in the West and down 2.1 percent in the East.

Intermodal traffic was down from last year with a total of 191,459 trailers and containers loaded during the week, which marked a 2.1 percent drop-off. The AAR said that container volume was down 1.4 percent, and trailer loadings were down 4.4 percent.

On the positive side, railroad volumes had a strong showing, with AAR’s estimated total weekly volume of 30.7 billion ton-miles up 1.3 percent from last year.

Of the 19 carload commodity groups tracked by the AAR, seven were up from last year, with grain up 20.2 percent, petroleum products up 12.0 percent, and grain mill products up 8.0 percent. Coke loadings were down 27.4 percent, and metallic ores were off by 18.4 percent.

The AAR said that cumulative volume for the first 47 weeks of 2007 totaled 15,368,236 carloads, which was down 2.6 percent from 2006. Trailers or containers were down 2.1 percent at 10,915,108 and the total volume of an estimated 1.59 trillion ton-miles was down 1.1 percent year over year.