(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on February 1, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Canadian and Mexican traffic grows, executives hope winter storms are to blame for U.S. chill
Railroads are hoping winter storms are the main reason freight traffic has slowed since November, but there are growing concerns that a new chill may have taken hold of the broader recovery.
Those concerns show up across a range of reports, from a recent Federal Reserve survey indicating tepid freight shipping activity as 2010 began, to a mild decline in December manufacturing output and a sharp fall in that month’s home sales.
The signs in rail traffic figures in January don’t provide much solace. Bulk carloadings by major U.S. railroads — which include commodities, construction materials, automobiles, metal products and equipment — have remained below their Nov. 21 peak of 287,987 every week since then despite recent pickups in a few key industrial cargoes, including chemicals.
Their intermodal loadings on Nov. 21 reached 213,382 containers and trailers. But the five U.S.-owned Class I carriers and a few regionals that report traffic to the Association of American Railroads have not seen box shipments come near that level in the last seven weeks. Carloads for the major U.S. railroads were down 6.7 percent in the first two weeks of the year, including a 21 percent drop in coal loadings.
“The volume picture is still uncertain,” James R. Young, Union Pacific’s chairman, president and CEO, told analysts on Jan. 21. But he noted most economists are calling for “some growth” this year.
Although freight shipments have slowed from last autumn’s mild but steady gains, U.S. rail lines also have battled a series of powerful winter storms for most of the past two months.