EP 682 and determines each railroad’s RSAM in Docket No. This schedule is used to develop rate of return on net investment (ROI) for use in revenue adequacy determinations. The Board uses this figure in a variety of regulatory proceedings, including railroad revenue adequacy determinations, rate reasonableness cases, feeder-line applications, rail line abandonments, trackage rights cases, and rail merger reviews. All Class I railroads are required to submit an Annual Report of Cars Loaded and Cars Terminated (Form STB-54). The chart above provides 10-year trends for some major rail commodities based on this alternative source of rail traffic data.

The manner in which fuel surcharges are assessed and calculated differs between carriers, but in general, they are designed to increase or decrease as the cost of fuel increases or decreases.Subsequently, the Board also imposed a requirement on Class I carriers that they report on:  fuel cost, fuel consumption, and surcharge revenues. More detail is available in AAR’s Weekly Railroad Traffic. Data are withheld for some of those STCC/year combinations to protect confidentiality. Carload traffic is classified into 20 major commodity categories such as coal, chemicals, grain, and primary metal products. Rail intermodal traffic (shipping containers and truck trailers moved on rail cars) is reported separately.The interactive chart below shows weekly rail traffic trends for the past few years. TranStats Data Library: Rail. TransBorder Freight Data.

EP 689.The Board determines annually the railroad industry’s cost of capital. Gauging U.S. Economic Activity Through Rail Traffic DataSince demand for rail service arises as a result of demand elsewhere in the economy for the products that railroads haul, rail traffic is a useful gauge of broader economic activity, both for specific industries and for the economy as a whole.

Today there are just six US Class I freight railroad companies. The Quarterly Earnings Reports are available The STB annually creates three variations of the Commodity Revenue Stratification Report, which show the revenues, variable costs, tons, and carloads by Standard Transportation Commodity Code (STCC). This report shows the number of waybill records, carloads, tons, revenue, ton-miles, car-miles, tons per car, revenue per ton, revenue per car, revenue per ton-mile, and length of haul associated with each two-digit STCC from 2010 onward. Based on data from the Wage Form A & B, the Office of Economics creates an annual compilation of Wage Statistics (Statement A-300). Click for Class I railroads are required to file an Annual Report of Finances and Operations, known as the R-1, that contains information about their finances and operating statistics. Railroad Facts 2019. Founded in 1934, AAR is the world’s leading railroad policy, research, standard setting, and technology organization that focuses on the safety and productivity of the U.S. freight rail industry. The classes are based on the carrier’s annual operating revenues. These thresholds, which were set in 1992, establish Class I carriers as any carrier earning revenue greater than $250 million, Class II carriers as those earning revenue between $20 million and $250 million, and Class III carriers as those earning revenue less than $20 million.

This report, which is produced by the Board, shows the number of carloads and number of tons that either originate, terminate, or pass through each state, as determined from the STB’s confidential The Commodity Revenue Stratification Reports that are listed under the The Class I railroads and the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) report on the Wage Form A & B the number of employees, service hours, compensation, and mileage run, by employee group (executive, officials and staff assistants, professional and administrative, maintenance of way and structures, maintenance of equipment & stores, transportation other than train and engine, and transportation train and engine). To view those proceedings, use the agency’s In addition, a chart showing the Board’s annual revenue adequacy determinations going back to 2000 is available below. A CSX "DPU" (Distributed Power Unit) rolls past a hot spot while crossing the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia on June 21, 2019. The “Annual Compilation of Wage Statistics of Class I Railroads in the United States” contains total figures on the number of employees, service hours, compensation, and mileage run for each Class I railroad. A sample of current weekly, monthly and annual information on freight rail traffic are in the interactive charts below.More detailed data is contained in a variety of AAR statistical products, which are free for AAR full members and available for purchase by non-AAR members through the Each week, the major North American railroads report their traffic for the previous week to AAR. Affiliates and Associates  include non-Class I and commuter railroads, rail supply companies, engineering firms, signal and communications firms, and rail car owners.Get freight rail industry news right to your inbox, from important policy updates to fun facts about America’s private, 140,000-mile network.