John D. Boyd | Oct 23, 2009 4:36PM EDT
A significant contributor came out of the RMI RailConnect index of short line traffic starting the week of Oct. 17, taking a bite out of several cargo categories.
RMI said the North American railroads that feed their volume into its data base – which represents more than 60 percent of small and regional carriers – originated 83,816 loads in the latest week.
That is down by 9.5 percent just from one week earlier, when the carriers picked up 92,646 loads. RMI first said traffic was down by 29.6 percent from the same week last year, a sudden worsening from the recent pace of a 26 percent drop.
Yet RMI has issued a corrected weekly tally for that week, after removing traffic for the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad group from the totals. Now it says the year-over-year decline was 25.9 percent, or in the same range as other recent weeks.
DM&E was acquired by Canadian Pacific Railway in October 2008, but continued over the past year to report its totals to RMI. That has now ended, said Paul Pascutti, RMI’s vice president for marketing, and RMI’s year-over-year comparison did not initially adjust for the change.
DM&E and its Iowa, Chicago & Eastern unit together handled a large number of carloads, Pascutti said, which would mostly explain the large drop in volume from Oct. 10 to Oct. 17.
Contact John D. Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.
