Weekly Rail Traffic, Port of Savannah Show Gains

Weekly rail traffic for the week ending last Saturday (October 9) continued to improve compared with the same week last year, with carloads increasing by 8.8% and intermodal traffic by 13.1%, according to today's report from the American Association of Railroads. Cumulative rail traffic for the first 40 weeks of 2010 has improved by 7.2% for carloads and 14.7% for intermodal units.   

This marks the 39th straight week starting in mid-January of improvements in intermodal rail traffic compared to the same week in 2009, and except for a holiday-related decline in July, rail carloads have increased for the last 32 weeks starting in late February.

In other positive shipping news released today:

"Container throughput in the Port of Savannah jumped 20.1 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended Sept. 30, to 742,637 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), compared to 618,256 TEUs in the same quarter last year, when volume was still depressed by the recession."