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12/17/2015
What's been a familiar story for most of 2015 continued in the week ending Dec. 12: total U.S. weekly rail traffic declined for carload and intermodal activity, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).
U.S. railroads' total traffic for the week fell 8 percent to 544,975 carloads and intermodal units compared with the same week in 2014. Carload volume declined 13.2 percent to 270,953 carloads, while intermodal volume slipped 2.3 percent to 274,022 containers and trailers.
Two of the 10 carload commodity groups posted increases: miscellaneous carloads soared 39.5 percent to 10,764 carloads; and motor vehicles and parts rose 1.8 percent to 19,502 carloads.
Commodities posting decreases included metallic ores and metals, down 27.2 percent to 20,935 carloads; coal, down 22.3 percent to 92,934 carloads; and petroleum and petroleum products, down 21.5 percent to 13,417 carloads.
Canadian railroads logged 73,531 carloads for the week, down 10.2 percent, and 57,493 intermodal units, down 3.8 percent compared with the same week in 2014. Mexican railroads reported 16,291 carloads for the week, up 4.9 percent compared with the same week last year, and 9,887 intermodal units, down 2.9 percent.
For the first 49 weeks of 2015 compared with the year-ago period, U.S. railroads posted cumulative volume of 26,664,525 carloads and intermodal units, down 2.1 percent; Canadian railroads logged cumulative volume of 6,724,851 carloads, containers and trailers, down 1.1 percent; and Mexican railroads reported cumulative volume of 1,334,716 carloads and intermodal containers and trailers, up 1.5 percent.