Large Railroads Post Better Holiday Volume

Major U.S. railroads reported stronger traffic over the July 4 holiday period than over the Memorial Day week, and had the lowest decline in year-over-year numbers since March.

Class I carriers and some regional lines that report to the Association of American Railroads hauled 241,240 carloads of varied commodities and machinery in the week ending July 4, and 169,290 intermodal containers and trailers.

Carloads were down 15.6 percent from the same week in 2008 and intermodal dropped 12.8 percent, the best showing since March 21 for carloads and March 7 for intermodal.

Helping lift the carload total was hopper car shipments of grain, which at 19,249 carloads were the highest since March 14 and about 2,000 to 3,000 higher than in recent weeks despite the holiday. Grain mill product loadings of 9,280 cars were at their highest level of 2009, and even managed a 4.3 percent gain over the same week last year.

With harvests of winter wheat under way in the Southwest and Great Plains, grain elevators often ship older supplies to clear space for the new product.

Rail traffic may also have benefited from the July 4 holiday falling on a Saturday, usually a slower rail shipments day anyway, while Memorial Day falls on a Monday when the workweek usually picks up from the weekend.

Still, besides that effect and the grain movements, some other cargoes ran stronger in the latest week. Pulp and paper shipments of 5,906 carloads were the highest since Jan. 24. Nonmetallic mineral loadings were the highest of the year at 4,982.

Within intermodal, AAR-reporting U.S. carriers loaded 28,241 trailers on flatcars, and 141,049 domestic as well as international containers.

Contact John Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.