Railroad shipping: AAR says carload and intermodal volumes both down

Staff -- Logistics Management, 5/30/2008

WASHINGTON—As was the case last week, the American Association of Railroads (AAR) said this week that carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic were down on United States railroads for the week ending May 24 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 330,208 cars, down 1.7 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 0.7 percent in the West and down 2.8 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 223,549 trailers or containers, decreasing 0.9 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 0.6 percent, and container volume was off by 1.3 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 34.0 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which is down 1.2 percent from the same week last year.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, six were up year over year, with grain up 12.7 percent and metallic ores up 38.3 percent. Lumber and wood products were down 12.7 percent and motor vehicles were off by 23.2 percent.

Cumulative volume for the first 21 weeks of the year were 6,839,694 carloads, which was ahead of the first 21 weeks of 2007 by 1.1 percent. Trailers or containers—at 4,633,948—was down 3.2 percent, and total volume was an estimated 707.4 billion ton-miles, which was up 2.3 percent year over year.