Industry News

Rail Traffic Reflects Economic Slump

October 23, 2009 | 08:45 a.m. CDT

U.S. railroads reported originating 275,545 carloads for the week ended Oct. 17, down 15.4 percent compared with the same week in 2008, reports the Association of American Railroads.

It was the same week last year in rail carloads (2.4 percent) and rail intermodal (2.8 percent) traffic that showed the first significant signs of the nation's economic downturn. Therefore, year-over-year comparisons for weekly rail traffic may appear to improve going forward.

Regionally, carloads were down 14.2 percent in the West and 17 percent in the East. Intermodal traffic totaled 206,139 trailers or containers, down 12.6 percent from a year ago. In the year-over-year comparison container volume fell 6.7 percent and trailer volume dropped 35.2 percent.

Eighteen of the 19 carload freight commodity groups were down from the same week last year. However, grain mill products were up 7.3 percent. Declines in commodity groups ranged from 2.7 percent for petroleum products to 74.7 percent for metallic ores.

For the first 41 weeks of 2009, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 10,930,879 carloads, down 18.1 percent from 2008; 7,762,379 trailers or containers, down 16.5 percent, and total volume of an estimated 1.17 trillion ton-miles, down 17.1 percent. Total volume on U.S. railroads for the week ending Oct. 17 was estimated at 31 billion ton-miles, off 13.9 percent from the same week last year.

Combined North American rail volume for the first 41 weeks of 2009 on 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 13,914,081 carloads, down 18.6 percent from last year, and 9,656,016 trailers and containers, down 16.5 percent from last year.