WASHINGTON — U.S. weekly rail traffic showed gains over 2022 figures for the week ending Sept. 23, the second consecutive week of improvement after traffic has been below year-earlier figures for most of 2023, according to statistics from the Association of American Railroads.
The week saw 493,232 carloads and intermodal units, a 2.8% increase over the corresponding week in 2022. That included 234,904 carloads, up 4.7% from a year earlier, and 258,419 containers and trailers, up 1.2%. Those gains followed increases for the week ending Sept. 16 that included an overall increase of 1.8%, a rise in carload traffic of 0.2%, and a gain in intermodal traffic of 3.3%.
Year-to-date figures still remain below 2022. Through 38 weeks of 2023, carload traffic is up 0.2% while intermodal volume is down 8.5% for an overall decline of 4.5%.
North American figures also edged upward. Volume from 12 reporting U.S., Canadian, and Mexican railroads for the week includes 346,952 carloads, up 3.7%; 342,697 intermodal units, down 0.3%, and a total of 689,659 carloads and intermodal units, up 1.7%. This was the first time the weekly North American figure had edged into positive territory in some time; a week ago, overall North American traffic was still down 0.8% compared to the same week in 2022.
Year-to-date figures have overall North American traffic down 3.9% compared to the first 38 weeks of 2022.
For many weeks in the past Grain has been the freight that has made figures less than previous year. Now Grain is same the last 2 weeks. So, if grain is ignored then traffic would have been same year to year for many weeks. IMO too much has been made by pessimism persons.
The question becomes why was grain down so much earlier this year? Someone in agriculture may know? Note Canadian grain was not down.