Following is a monthly update on United States (rail freight traffic by sector with Canadian totals), with a focus on carloads. The data in the table is from the April issue of Railway Age, and we have added a column that shows typical car types for ease of reference. Each month, when this data is published, the report is for the second previous month. Here is the current information reported, which covers in this case the four weeks ending February 27th:

Major US Railroads
Commodity Typical Car Type (s) February 2021 February 2020 % Change
Grain Covered Hopper 91,164 78,822 15.66%
Farm Products ex. Grain Covered Hopper, Gondola 3,430 3,883 -11.67%
Grain Mill Products Covered Hopper 33,787 36,540 -7.53%
Food Products Boxcar, Tankcar, other 22,765 23,030 -1.15%
Chemicals Boxcar, Tankcar, other 118,468 132,417 -10.53%
Petroleum & Petroleum Products Tankcar 39,991 52,203 -23.39%
Coal Gondola 221,946 253,783 -12.54%
Primary Forest Products Flatcar, Gondola 3,834 4,182 -8.32%
Lumber & Wood Products Flatcar 13,170 13,697 -3.85%
Pulp & Paper Products Boxcar 21,347 20,769 2.78%
Metallic Ores Open top Hopper, Gondola 15,769 15,548 1.42%
Coke Open top Hopper 12,287 15,002 -18.10%
Primary Metal Products Gondola, Flatcar, Boxcars 33,104 36,210 -8.58%
Iron & Steel Scrap Gondola 14,761 15,312 -3.60%
Motor Vehicles & Parts Autorack, Boxcar, Flatcar 55,806 70,142 -20.44%
Crushed Stone, Sand & Gravel Open top Hopper, Gondola 49,288 73,608 -33.04%
Nonmetallic Minerals Open top Hopper, Gondola 12,052 13,718 -12.14%
Stone, Clay & Glass Products Covered Hopper, Open top Hopper, etc. 25,933 28,191 -8.01%
Waste & Nonferrous Scrap Gondola 12,514 13,682 -8.54%
All other carloads n/a 23,220 26,869 -13.58%
Total US Carloads 824,636 927,608 -11.10%
Canadian Carloads 293,618 308,922 -4.95%
Combined US & Canadian Carloads 1,118,254 1,236,530 -9.57%

As much as everyone would like to see our economy has recovered from the pandemic, this data shows we are still down over 10% in carload shipments; which in our view is a reasonable measure of economic and industrial activity. Future monthly comparisons may give a false impression of current trends as the “year-ago” months coming up head into the initial shutting down of much of the economic activity.

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