Weekly Intermodal Rail Traffic Declines for First Time in Five Months
Aaron Hockley/FlickrWeekly U.S. intermodal rail traffic declined from the same period last year for the first time in five months, but increased in July, the Association of American Railroads reported.
Intermodal traffic for the week ended Aug. 1 declined 0.3% to 269,468 compared with the same week last year, AAR said Aug. 5 in its weekly report.
The dip is the first decline since March, when problems at West Coast ports and bad weather impacted traffic. The decline follows a 2.3% increase the prior week.
Intermodal volume for July increased 3.5% to 1.33 million as carloads declined 6.5% to 1.38 million, AAR said Aug. 5 in its weekly report.
“Railroads are overexposed, relative to the economy in general, to the energy sector. Put another way, changes in the energy sector are having a bigger effect on rail traffic than they are on the economy as a whole,” John Gray, AAR senior vice president of policy and economics, said in a statement.
“For that reason, we don't think declines in overall rail carloads in recent months are necessarily reflective of fundamental weakness in the broader economy,” Gray said.
Six of the 20 commodity groups AAR tracks each month increased over last year, led by grain at 6.2%. Coal declined 12.5% year-over-year, with 69,519 fewer carloads of coal.
Excluding coal, carloads declined 2.8% in July compared with the same month last year.
Rail carload volume for the week, which excludes intermodal units, dropped 4.8% year-over-year to 289,657 carloads. The last carload increase was the week of April 18.
Four of the 10 commodity groups AAR tracks increased for the week, from the same time last year, including miscellaneous carloads at 14.5% and grain at 10.4%. For the week, coal declined 19.2% to 90,654 units.
Total North American intermodal volume declined 0.5% to 350,943 units for the week. Canadian railroads moved 60,582 intermodal units, a 0.1% dip. Railroads in Mexico moved 10,893 intermodal containers, a 6.9% decline, according to AAR.
For the first seven months of the year, U.S. intermodal traffic increased 2.5% to 7.9 million units from the same period in 2014.
