Railroad shipping: Strong carload growth paces weekly performance, says AAR

Staff -- Logistics Management, 5/16/2008

WASHINGTON—Paced by strong performances in coal, grain, and metallic ores loadings, carload freight on U.S. railroads was up 5.0 percent for the week ending May 10, according to data released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

Coming in at 337,103 cars for the week, carload volume—which does not include intermodal data—was up 10.0 percent in the West and down 1.0 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings totaled 229,969 trailers or containers, dropping 1.1 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 4.0 percent, and container volume was down 2.4 percent.

Another positive sign for railroad volumes picking up the pace in what has been a low-volume year-to-data, weekly railroad volume was estimated at 34.9 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which is up 6.4 percent from the 19th week of 2007.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, eight were up year over year, with grain up 18.2 percent, coal up 11.9 percent, and metallic ores up 27.8 percent. On the other end were lumber and wood products down 12.0 percent and motor vehicles and equipment down 20.0 percent.

Cumulative volume for the first 19 weeks of the year came in at 6,178,324 carloads, which was ahead of the first 19 weeks of 2007 by 1.3 percent. Trailers or containers—at 4,166,575—was down 3.4 percent, and total volume was an estimated 639.3 billion ton-miles, which was up 2.5 percent year over year.

Railroad safety: The AAR also announced that two records were set in 2007 for railroad safety in two areas: accident rate, which it said was the lowest in history; and grade crossing accident rate. And it added that the employee injury rate was the second lowest in history, off of 2006’s record by less than one percent.