Railroad shipping: AAR says Midwest flooding continues to negatively impact rail volumes

Staff -- Logistics Management, 6/26/2008

WASHINGTON—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 June 21 compared to last year.

The AAR said that volumes are down in large part due to the Midwest floods, which have had a major effect on rail freight volumes.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 318,275 cars, down 5.7 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 6.1 percent in the West and 5.3 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 228,547 trailers or containers, decreasing 5.6 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 1.8 percent, and container volume was off by 6.6 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 32.8 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which down 4.4 percent compared to the 25^th week of 2007.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, just two were up year over year, with chemicals up 4.9 percent and grain mill products up 0.8 percent. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 19.3 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 21.8 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 25 weeks of the year came in at 8,123,172 carloads, which was ahead of the first 25 weeks of 2007 by 0.3 percent. Trailers or containers—at 5,531,341—were down 3.2 percent, and total volume was an estimated 839.8 billion ton-miles, which was up 1.6 percent year over year.