Railroad shipping: AAR reports weekly carload and intermodal volumes are down in to start September

Staff -- Logistics Management, 9/12/2008

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

The AAR did point out that part of the reason for the decline was because of Hurricane Gustav at the beginning of the week and Tropical Storm Hannah near the end of the week, which caused railroad disruptions in certain parts of the country.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 306,340 cars, down 3.5 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 1.7 percent in the West and 6.1 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 200,876 trailers or containers, decreasing 3.4 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 2.8 percent, and container volume was off by 3.5 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 32.0 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was down 3.3 percent from the same timeframe last year.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, five were up year over year, with metallic ores up 35.6 percent and metals up 2.9 percent. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 27.7 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 26.3 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 36 weeks of the year came in at 11,705,340 carloads, which was ahead of the first 36 weeks of 2007 by 0.2 percent. Trailers or containers—at 8,029,188—were down 2.9 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.2 trillion ton-miles, which was up 1.3 percent year over year.