Railroad shipping: AAR says carload and intermodal freight are down

Staff -- Logistics Management, 7/31/2008

WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) said today that carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic volumes were down on United States railroads for the week ending July 26 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 333,187 cars, down 0.9 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were up 1.7 percent in the West and down 4.3 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 235,397 trailers or containers, decreasing 3.2 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 1.3 percent, and container volume was off by 4.4 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 34.8 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was the same as last year for the same timeframe.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, six were up year over year, with metallic ores up 23.8 percent and grain up 5.0 percent. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 33.6 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 19.6 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 30 weeks of the year came in at 9,720,848 carloads, which was ahead of the first 30 weeks of 2007 by 0.4 percent. Trailers or containers—at 6,655,987—were down 3.1 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.006 trillion ton-miles, which was down 4.2 percent year over year.