(The following appeared on the Journal of Commerce website on March 8, 2011.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Railcar owners in the U.S., Canada and Mexico took 12,457 units out of storage in February, leaving the continent’s idled fleet at 20.2 percent of all railcars available for service, said the Association of American Railroads.
The trade group estimated the total fleet as of March 1 at 1.519 million railcars, down from 1.579 million on July 1, 2009, which was when the industry’s car storage level peaked in the recession at 502,853 units.
Since then, the AAR said, about 60,000 older railcars have been scrapped while in recent months thousands of new cars have begun to enter the fleet to make up for models the market needed. That means a net of about 137,000 were pulled out of storage and put back into revenue service since the recession’s lowest level of rail equipment usage.
The full story is at www.joc.com.