Railroad shipping: AAR says weekly carload freight performance up year over year

Staff -- Logistics Management, 4/25/2008

WASHINGTON—The American Association of Railroads (AAR) said yesterday that carload freight volumes was up and intermodal traffic was down on United States railroads for the week ending April 19 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 336,847 cars, up 1.5 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were up 2.5 percent in the West and 0.3 percent in the East. The AAR said that carload freight was paced by strong performances for grain and coal loadings, which were up 17.4 percent and 8.0 percent, respectively, year over year.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 224,112 trailers or containers, decreasing 3.2 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 2.4 percent, and container volume was off by 3.4 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 34.9 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which is up 3.3 percent from the 16th week of 2007.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, nine were up year over year, with grain up 15.1 percent and food and metals up 4.2 percent. On the other end were lumber and wood products down 20.8 percent and motor vehicles down 20.6 percent.

Cumulative volume for the first 16 weeks of the year were 5,169,692 carloads, which was ahead of the first 16 weeks of 2007 by 1.0 percent. Trailers or containers—at 3,487,182—was down 3.5 percent, and total volume was an estimated 534.9 billion ton-miles, which was up 2.3 percent year over year.