North American Rail Traffic Fell 5.1% in Week Ended May 25
May 29 2019 - 1:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Colin Kellaher
North American rail traffic fell a sharp 5.1% last week, as
relentless severe storms and flooding continue to disrupt freight
service, the Association of American Railroads said.
Carload volume for the week ended May 25 on 12 reporting U.S.,
Canadian and Mexican railroads fell 3.6%, while intermodal traffic
fell 6.7%, the trade group said.
North American rail traffic was 1.2% lower in the week ended May
18. For the first 21 weeks of the year, North American volume is
down 1.5%, compared with a year-to-date decline of 1.3% reported a
week earlier.
The AAR said U.S. rail traffic fell 6.7% last week, as the
volume of intermodal containers and trailers dropped 8.3%. U.S.
carloads fell 5% for the week, with declines in seven of the 10
commodity groups tracked.
U.S. rail traffic is now down 2.3% for the year to date,
compared with a cumulative decline of 2% at the end of the previous
week, the AAR said.
In a customer notice posted on its website Tuesday, Union
Pacific Corp. (UNP) said severe weather, heavy rainfall and
flooding are disrupting operations in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma
and Arkansas, resulting in prolonged outages.
BNSF, owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB), last week
advised customers that repeated heavy rain and storms were causing
track outages on multiple subdivisions in Missouri, Kansas and
Oklahoma.
The AAR said rail traffic rose 0.4% in Canada last week, with a
1.1% rise in carloads more than offsetting a 0.5% decline in
intermodal units.
Rail traffic fell 3.9% in Mexico last week, with carloads down
3.4% and intermodal units off 4.4%.
Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 29, 2019 13:35 ET (17:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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