The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported this week that United States carload and intermodal volumes followed last week’s lead and were both up—rather than the months-long trend of mixed—for the week ending March 23.
Carload volume—278,738—was up 0.2 percent annually and below the week ending March 16 at 280,624 and ahead of the week ending March 9 at 276,698. Intermodal—at 235,641 containers and trailers—was up 1.4 percent annually and ahead of the week ending March 16 at 228,806 and the week ending March 9 at 235,174.
Total weekly traffic for carloads and intermodal units—at 514,379—was up 0.7 percent annually.
The AAR recently changed how it reports weekly commodity loadings. Its former process was comprised of 20 distinct commodity groups, which have now been grouped together.
The new commodity categories are: chemicals; coal; farm and food products, excluding grain (which includes farm products, excluding grain, grain mill products and food & kindred products); forest products; grain; metallic ores and metals (which also includes metallic ores, coke, metals & products, iron & steel scrap); motor vehicles and parts (which also includes motor vehicles and equipment); nonmetallic minerals and products (which also includes crushed stone, sand, and gravel; nonmetallic minerals; stone, clay & glass products); petroleum and petroleum products); and other (which includes waste and nonferrous scrap and all other carloads).
For the week ending March 23, four of the ten commodity groups showed gains, including petroleum products up 57 percent and motor vehicles. Grain was down 17.3 percent.
On a year-to-date basis, carloads are down 3.3 percent at 3,289,597 and intermodal is up 6.2 percent at 2,851,329 containers and trailers.