Railroad shipping: AAR says carload and intermodal volumes are down

Staff -- Logistics Management, 9/19/2008

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 September 13 compared to the same timeframe last year.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 329,836 cars, down 2.4 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 0.6 percent in the West and 5.0 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 236,877 trailers or containers, decreasing 6.1 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 5.4 percent, and container volume was off by 6.3 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 34.6 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was down 1.7 percent from the same timeframe last year.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, three were up year over year, with metallic ores up 20.1 percent and coal up 7.0 percent. Motor vehicles and equipment were down 25.1 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 18.4 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 37 weeks of the year came in at 12,035,176 carloads, which was ahead of the first 37 weeks of 2007 by 0.1 percent. Trailers or containers—at 8,266,065—were down 2.0 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.25 trillion ton-miles, which was up 1.2 percent year over year.