CNR Canadian National Railway Company

By Colin Kellaher

North American rail traffic fell 3.8% last week, as flooding continued to wreak havoc on U.S. networks, data from the Association of American Railroads showed.

Carload volume for the week ended June 1 on 12 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads fell 3.2%, while intermodal traffic fell 4.5%, the trade group said Wednesday.

North American rail traffic was 5.1% lower in the week ended May 25. For the first 22 weeks of the year, North American volume is down 1.6%.

The AAR said U.S. rail traffic fell 6.1% last week, on the heels of a 6.7% drop a week earlier. U.S. carloads fell 5.8% for the week amid declines in eight of the 10 commodity groups tracked. The volume of intermodal containers and trailers fell 6.4%.

In a customer notice posted on its website Monday, Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) said severe weather, heavy rainfall and flooding have led to new, prolonged and expanded outages in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The railroad said the outages are causing terminal and main-line congestion in several key locations, which it said will likely impact service to customers, including those outside the affected areas. Union Pacific said it has staged resources at strategic locations to address outages as quickly as possible.

BNSF, owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB), last week said major flooding was causing significant disruptions to normal traffic flows through central areas of its network, and that it was re-routing trains as much as possible to minimize disruptions.

Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC) Monday said flooding was affecting traffic between Decatur, Ill., and Kansas City and was also preventing traffic from being diverted to operate via St. Louis.

U.S. rail traffic is now down 2.4% for the year to date, compared with a cumulative decline of 2.3% at the end of the previous week, the AAR said.

The AAR said rail traffic rose 2.9% in Canada last week, with a 4% rise in carloads and a 1.5% increase in intermodal units.

Rail traffic edged up 0.5% in Mexico last week, as a 1.4% rise in intermodal units more than offset a 0.3% drop in carloads.

Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 05, 2019 12:52 ET (16:52 GMT)

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