(The following appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on February 18, 2011.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — North American railcar owners scrapped a net 3 to 4 percent of cars they operated or held in storage during the recession, sending about 57,000 aging units to recyclers since they began drawing down their fleet of stored railcars in mid-2009.
The Association of American Railroads said the railcar fleet in the U.S., Canada and Mexico totaled 1.522 million units as of Feb. 1, down from 1.579 million in July 2009. The AAR’s Railinc subsidiary, which tracks car movements around the continent, says the North American fleet ended 2010 with about 1.54 million units, down 3 percent from a year earlier.
The full story appears on the Journal of Commerce website.