Summary of North American Rail Freight Traffic

Railshare is a comprehensive database of North American rail traffic. The data are provided each Thursday by the Association of American Railroads. Atlantic Systems Inc. processes this information and redistributes the data in an easy to use format. Each week's report covers the seven day period ending the preceding Saturday. Rail traffic is disaggregated between carload (traffic moving in traditional freight cars such as box cars, tank cars and hoppers) and intermodal traffic (containers and piggyback service). Railshare provides commodity breakdowns for carload traffic; commodity detail for intermodal traffic is unavailable. Railroads originate and also move traffic jointly with other originating carriers. The carrier totals shown in Railshare aggregate all traffic handled by individual carriers. Market shares are calculated as total handlings by carrier divided by total U.S. originated rail traffic. Railshare graphs show four major breakdowns of rail traffic. Total traffic includes all carload and intermodal traffic; carload traffic is further divided between economically sensitive commodities (cyclical) and those that are less affected by the business cycle (baseline).