Railroad shipping: AAR reports freight is down and ton-miles are up for the week

Staff -- Logistics Management, 8/21/2008

WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) said this week that carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic volumes were down on United States railroads for the week ending August 16 compared to last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 335,245 cars, down 0.8 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were up 1.3 percent in the West and down 3.7 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 237,034 trailers or containers, decreasing 0.5 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was up 1.0 percent, and container volume was off by 0.4 percent.

Despite carload and intermodal volumes being down again, the AAR noted that weekly railroad volume was estimated at 35.2 billion ton-miles, which was 0.6 percent compared to last year.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, seven were up year over year, with metals up 12.4 percent and grain and coal up 9.5 percent and percent, respectively. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 30.6 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 17.5 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 33 weeks of the year came in at 10,722,139 carloads, which was ahead of the first 33 weeks of 2007 by 0.3 percent. Trailers or containers—at 7,357,794—were down 2.9 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.11 trillion ton-miles, which was up 1.5 percent year over year.