Coal shipments originated on US railroads decreased to a new year-low mark for the second straight week, Association of American Railroads data showed Wednesday.
For the week ending March 12, the AAR reported a total of 71,221 coal carloads traveled US railways, a 0.6% decrease in volumes from the prior week and a 34.1% drop from the year-ago week.
Year to date, US coal carload volumes have fallen 30.7%, or about 330,000 carloads.
Weekly coal shipment volumes have averaged 74,452 carloads through the first 10 weeks of this year compared to 107,473 carloads through the first 10 weeks of 2015.
Overall US rail traffic for the week totaled 489,177 carloads, and coal made up 14.6% of all traffic.
Canadian railroads -- which include the US operations of Canadian National, which serves several mines in the Illinois Basin, and Canadian Pacific -- originated 6,693 coal carloads, down 0.9% from the prior week and 32.5% from the same week last year.
