4th Straight Week of Gains for Rail Freight Traffic; 16 of 19 Commodity Groups Increased vs. Year Ago
The Association of American Railroads reported that for the fourth consecutive week, freight traffic on U.S. railroads increased compared with the same period a year ago during the week ended March 20. Highlights include:
1. U.S. railroads originated 287,639 carloads during the week, up 4.3 percent from the comparable week in 2009.
2. Intermodal traffic totaled 201,300 trailers and containers, up 9.5 percent from last year.
3. Sixteen of 19 carload commodity groups showed gains from a year ago, with 13 of them showing double digit percentage gains, led by a 69.2 percent increase in loadings of metals and products. Other commodities showing significant increases included grain, up 24 percent; motor vehicles, up 20.8 percent; waste and scrap, up 33.1 percent; lumber and wood products, up 21.8 percent, and chemicals, up 14.4 percent.
4. Combined North American rail volume for the first 11 weeks of 2010 on 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 3,941,811 carloads, up 3.6 percent from last year, and 2,772,992 trailers and containers, up 8.7 percent from last year.
3 Comments:
Talk about an easy year over year comparison. The four week rolling average of rail traffic is down 8.8% compared to 2008.
Warren Buffett has to be happy.
Item in the local paper today telling us that Burlington Northern Santa Fe will take out of storage 11 miles of freight cars that have been mothballed on sidings between Helena and Great Falls. These storage areas are scattered all over the northern Intermountain West and, I suspect, elsewhere.
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