Railroad shipping: AAR says carload freight up, intermodal down

Staff -- Logistics Management, 7/17/2008

WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) said today that carload freight volumes were up and intermodal traffic volumes were down on United States railroads for the week ending July 12 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 321,049 cars, up 3.3 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were up 6.4 percent in the West and down 1.2 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 231,921 trailers or containers, decreasing 2.8 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 2.4 percent, and container volume was off by 4.1 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 33.6 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was up 4.3 percent compared to the 28^th week of 2007.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, 11 were up year over year, with metallic ores up 22.4 percent and grain up 6.3 percent. Primary forest products were down 19.9 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 16.4 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 28 weeks of the year came in at 9,059,027 carloads, which was ahead of the first 28 weeks of 2007 by 0.4 percent. Trailers or containers—at 6,187,074—were down 3.1 percent, and total volume was an estimated 937.4 billion ton-miles, which was up 1.6 percent year over year.