WASHINGTON—The Association of American Railroads (AAR) announced today that intermodal freight on United States railroads has set a new record for the fifth straight year and the 18th time in the last 20 years.

For the first 50 weeks of 2006, intermodal volume reached 11.875.340 trailers or containers for the week ending December 16. And this figure exceeds last year’s figure of 11,693,512 trailers of containers. The AAR said in a press release that it is likely that intermodal volume will hit 12 million units for the first time ever.

On a weekly basis-for the week ending December 16-intermodal volume on the rails was 240,742 trailers or containers, which was up 2.4 percent from the same week last year; container volume was ahead of last year by 8.7 percent and trailer volume declined 12.7 percent.

For railroad carloads for the week ending December 16, the total of 336,307 cars was up 3.7 percent from the same timeframe a year ago.

For the 19 carload commodity groups that are tracked by the AAR, loading of coke were up 22.4 percent and metallic ores were up 22.1 percent. On the flip side, loading of lumber and wood products continued their downward slide with a 26.7 percent decline, and forest products were down 6.9 percent.

The AAR also said that cumulative volumes for the first 50 weeks of 2006 were 16,773,307 carloads, which was 1.2 percent ahead of last year. Trailers or a container—at 11,875,340—was up 5.2 percent, and the total volume of 1.68 trillion ton-miles was up 2.5 percent from 2005.