AAR: North American rail traffic registered gains in year's 19th week

For the week ending May 10, U.S. railroads registered 296,813 carloads, up 5.6 percent, and 267,283 intermodal loads, up 7.7 percent, compared with volumes from the same week last year, according to the Association of American Railroads.

Total combined U.S. traffic climbed 6.6 percent to 564,096 units carloads. Seven of 10 carload commodity groups posted gains, led by grain at 29.7 percent and nonmetallic minerals/products at 13 percent, while chemical carloads declined 2.2 percent.

For the week ending May 10, Canadian railroads reported 86,451 carloads, up 10.3 percent, and 61,161 intermodal units, up 14.7 percent, year over year. Mexican railroads' weekly carloads rose 7.4 percent to 15,971 units and their intermodal volume climbed 13.8 percent to 10,923 intermodal units.

Through 2014's first 19 weeks, 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads handled 7,100,856 carloads, up 1.1 percent, and 5,998,618 containers and trailers, up 5.2 percent compared with the same 2013 period.