Storms Cut Traffic at Large U.S. Railroads

Major U.S.-owned railroads saw their originations of bulk commodity and equipment traffic fall more than 20,000 carloads from the end of January to mid-February, a time when powerful winter storms hit the eastern U.S. especially hard.

New carloads for the week ending Feb. 13 sank to 257,823 units for Class I and regional U.S. freight lines that report to the Association of American Railroads, from 268,033 a week earlier and 278,438 in the week through Jan. 30.

“Two major snow storms in less than one week caused a sharp drop in freight traffic on U.S. railroads,” AAR said in releasing the numbers.

But that trend was limited to big U.S.-owned railroads, as AAR reported that the two large Canadian carriers saw carload originations rise to 69,954 units in the latest week from 69,023 two weeks before. Mexican carriers tracked by AAR also reported continuing gains in their much smaller volume, as the biggest U.S. lines saw traffic decline in the storm period.

For intermodal traffic, major U.S. lines picked up 192,354 containers and trailers of all sizes in the Feb. 13 week, down from 201,188 as of Feb. 6 and 203,952 on Jan. 30.

Economists say the underlying trend in the economy is continuing to strengthen, moderately but steadily, with recovery continuing in factory output including vehicle production and even by some measures in home buying and construction.

Contact John D. Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.