Railroad shipping: AAR says weekly rail volumes are down again

Staff -- Logistics Management, 9/26/2008

WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) said carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic volumes were down again on United States railroads for the week ending September 20 compared to the same timeframe last year. The AAR stated that a primary reason for the decline in traffic is due to disruptions caused by Hurricane Ike, which struck the Gulf Coast on September 13.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, came in at 312,662 cars, down 7.8 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 10.4 percent in the West and 4.3 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 234,286 trailers or containers, decreasing 6.2 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 6.6 percent, and container volume was off 6.1 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 32.8 billion ton-miles by the AAR, which was down 6.8 percent from the same timeframe last year.

Of the 21 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, three were up year over year, with metallic ores up 16.6 percent and coal up 2.2 percent. Grain was down 22.6 percent, and lumber and wood products were down 25.0 percent.  

Cumulative volume for the first 38 weeks of the year came in at 12,347,838 carloads, which was down 0.1 percent the first 38 weeks of 2007. Trailers or containers—at 8,500,351—were down 3.1 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.28 trillion ton-miles, which was up 1.0 percent year over year.