Railroad shipping: AAR says weekly freight totals are up year over year

Staff -- Logistics Management, 7/10/2008

WASHINGTON—The American Association of Railroads (AAR) said this week that carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic were up on United States railroads for the week ending July 5 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 286,242 cars, up 1.1 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were up 1.5 percent in the West and 0.3 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 194,136 trailers or containers, increasing 0.8 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 7.3 percent, and container volume was off by 0.9 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 30.0 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was up 2.0 percent compared to the 27^th week of 2007.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, 11 were up year over year, with metallic ores up 14.3 percent and grain up 13.6 percent. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 14.0 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 15.6 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 27 weeks of the year came in at 8,737,978 carloads, which was ahead of the first 27 weeks of 2007 by 0.3 percent. Trailers or containers—at 5,955,153—were down 3.1 percent, and total volume was an estimated 903.8 billion ton-miles, which was up 1.5 percent year over year.