Transportation and Logistics: Rail freight volumes continue slide

Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/13/2008 12:42:00 PM

WASHINGTON – The trend of rail freight volumes trailing figures from this point last year is continuing, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

This week, freight volumes once again trailed totals from the week ending Nov. 8 last year, the AAR said.

Carload freight was down 8.4 percent compared to last year, at 314,433 cars. Intermodal, which is tallied separately from carload freight, trailed by 6.3 percent at 228,632 trailers or containers.

Container volume and trailer traffic both fell,  4.9 and 11.2 percent, respectively. Total volume dropped 7.2 percent to 33.5 billion ton-miles. 

Out of 19 carload commodity groups, 16 were down from a year ago. Waste and scrap were down 40 percent, while motor vehicles went down 30.8 percent and metals fell 30.6 percent. Of the remaining three that went up, the “catch all” category, all other carloads, went up the most at 31.4 percent.

Cumulative carload volume for the first 45 weeks of 2008 is down 0.7 percent, at 14,630,860. Cumulative trailers or containers was down 3.1 percent at 10,150,762. Total volume was up 0.4 percent from last year, at an estimated 1.52 trillion ton-miles.

During the same week, carload traffic on Canadian railroads came to 71,065 cars, down 10.3 percent from last year. Intermodal was down 8.4 percent at 47,782 trailers or containers. Cumulative originations for the first 45 weeks of 2008 were down 4.9 percent over last year in Canada, at 3,327,327, while trailers and containers totaled 2,179,864, a 3.2 percent increase.

In total, cumulative volume for the first 45 weeks of 2008 on U.S. and Canadian railroads came to 17,968,187 carloads, down 1.5 percent from last year, and 12,330,626 trailers and containers, a 2.1 percent decrease from last year.