Rail Freight Powers Through Holiday Week as Intermodal Surge Enters Seventh Straight Week

America's freight railroads shrugged off the Independence Day lull, posting one of the strongest holiday weeks on record and extending a summer boom that is reshaping how goods move across the country.

Total US rail traffic for the week ending July 4 reached 482,121 carloads and intermodal units, up 8.7% from the same week a year earlier, according to the Association of American Railroads. The gain was striking given the holiday timing, when shippers and railroads traditionally scale back.

Intermodal was again the standout. Volumes climbed 12.9% year over year to 269,430 containers and trailers, marking the seventh consecutive week that intermodal traffic has risen by 10% or more. Before the current run, intermodal was up less than 1% on 2025. Carloads, more modest at 3.7%, still advanced despite a continued structural slide in coal, the only one of ten commodity groups to decline.

The forces behind the surge are increasingly clear. With diesel prices sitting above year-ago levels and spot truckload rates forecast to jump 34% year over year this July, shippers are steadily diverting inland freight from the highway to the rails. Intermodal volumes are running roughly 10% above the five-year average as that cost advantage widens.

The strength is broad based. Nine of ten commodity groups gained on the week, led by grain, metallic ores and metals, and farm products and food, pointing to resilient agricultural exports and steady industrial demand.

For the first half of 2026, combined US traffic reached 13.1 million carloads and intermodal units, up 3.4%. With grain harvest movements and peak intermodal season still ahead, the industry heads into the second half well positioned, provided the broader economy holds and coal does not weaken further.