According to a report from the Association of America Railroads for the week ending June 8, US railroads had 278,249 carloads, a 2.8% drop over the same period last year. However, intermodal loads were up 2.5% to 252,641 loads during the same time period.

Total US traffic was down 0.3% to 530,890.

While five of 10 commodity groups posted gains, AAR said, coal was not one of them – though the results could have been worse. Coal declined 8% year-on-year while grain fell more than 22%.

According to figures from the US Energy Information Administration and data crunched by analyst firm Robert Baird, coal traffic has been mostly flat in the second quarter of 2013.

Meanwhile, overall coal inventories at the nation’s utilities have slipped 6% since the start of the year and are at their lowest levels since the end of 2011.

“At recent investor conferences, Union Pacific noted its customer inventories were two days below average while CSX said inventories at northeastern utilities had normalized, while stockpiles in the southeast still remained above average,” officials said.

AAR also follows totals from Mexico and Canada, the latter of which also has experienced some slowing.

Canadian railroads reported weekly carloads of 77,667 for the week ended June 8, down 4.9%, and intermodal volumes were 53,745 units, down 3.3% year-on-year.

Mexican railroads reported a 12.1% increase in traffic to 16,783 units while intermodal volumes went up just over 1% to 10,068 units.

Year to date, a total of 23 weeks, the 13 reporting US, Canadian and Mexican railroads handled 8,512,109 carloads, a slowdown of 0.5%.

There were 6,927,478 containers and trailers, up about 4% versus the same period of 2012.