ARCI: 2019 rail-car deliveries beat 10-year average

American Railway Car Institute (ARCI) builders finished 2019 with deliveries totaling 58,026 units, exceeding the 10-year average of 50,524 units, the Railway Supply Institute's ARCI Committee announced yesterday.

The fourth-quarter 2019 deliveries of 14,727 units beat deliveries posted in Q4 2018 (13,462), as well as those posted in Q3 2019 (14,571), according to ARCI data.

However, orders for full-year 2019 came in at 37,196 units, about half of the reported orders for the previous year. Orders in Q4 2019 totaled 8,464 units, showing "continued weakness" but still slightly better than the 7,315 units ordered in Q3 2019, ARCI officials said in a press release.

Still, Q4 2019 orders were less than half of those at year-end 2018, they said.

Meanwhile, the year-end rail-car backlog stood at 51,295 units, down 36 percent from 2018's level.

"Builder backlogs are across all major car types with the majority of the backlog in tank cars, followed by covered hoppers," ARCI officials said. "Builders are seeing a shift out of the smaller cube covered hoppers into the midsize covered hopper and continued demand for larger non-pressure tank cars."