Railroad shipping: AAR reports another down week for volume for week ending November 15

Staff -- Logistics Management, 11/20/2008

WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) said today that carload freight volumes and intermodal traffic volumes were down once again on United States railroads for the week ending November 15 compared to the same timeframe last year. Both these weeks included Veterans Day.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data was 309,099 cars, down 9.1 percent from the same timeframe last year. And carload freight loadings were down 6.5 percent in the West and 12.8 percent in the East.

Intermodal loadings, which are not included in carload data, totaled 225,375 trailers or containers, down 7.9 percent compared to the same timeframe a year ago. Trailer volume was down 11.7 percent, and container volume decreased 6.9 percent.

Weekly railroad volume was estimated at 32.8 billion ton-miles by the AAR which was down 7.9 percent from the same timeframe last year.

Of the 19 commodity groups tracked by the AAR, three groups were up year over year, with coal and pulp, paper, and allied products both up 6.5 percent. Lumber and wood products and motor vehicles and equipment were down 32.0 percent and 34.5 percent, respectively.

Cumulative volume for the first 46 weeks of the year was 14,939,959 carloads, which was down 0.9 percent compared to the first 46 weeks of 2007. Trailers or containers—at 10,376,137—were down 3.2 percent, and total volume was an estimated 1.56 trillion ton-miles, which was up 0.2 percent year over year.