Monday, November 23, 2009

Railroad shipping: AAR reports volumes are down 8.9 percent for the week ending November 14

WASHINGTON-The Association of American Railroads reported this week that total volume for the week ending November 14 was down percent 8.9 compared to the corresponding week last year and 17 percent from the same week in 2007.


Last month, AAR officials said that they will be reporting 2009 weekly rail traffic with year-over-year comparisons for 2008 and 2007 from this point on, because at this time a year ago is when the economic downturn began to take hold.

Weekly carload freight, which does not include intermodal data, was 281,218 carloads, which topped the week ending November 7 which hit 274,486 carloads and the week ending October 31 at 275,349. Carloads were down 8.2 percent in the West year-over-year and 14.1 percent compared to 2007. And in the East, carloads were down 10 percent year-over-year and 21 percent compared to 2007.

Intermodal container and trailer volumes-at 208,056 trailers and containers-were down 7.7 percent year-over-year and are also up on a sequential basis compared to 206,890 for the week ending November 7. Intermodal volumes are up the last three weeks, and the week ending November 14 matches up favorably with the week ending October-the highest week of the year, which hit 208,941. Intermodal container volume was off 1.5 percent year-over-year and 8.3 percent compared to 2007, while trailer volume was off 30.2 percent year-over-year and 38.3 percent compared to 2007.

As LM has previously reported, while intermodal volumes remain down, there continues to be steady improvement in recent weeks compared to pre-Labor Day volumes, which were in the 189,000-200,000 range. In recent weeks, these volumes have settled into the 200,000-to-210,000 range.

In recent weeks, the AAR, railroad executives and industry analysts have stated that rail volumes continue to reflect the overall economy and also pointed out that volumes appear to be stabilizing and not getting incrementally worse.

Read the rest of the logisticsmgmt.com article here.

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