Rail operations in most area of the country follow this pattern
1. Monday - light - Industrial jobs deliver cars to industry that arrived over the weekend...Industry's generally don't have much 'outbound' shipments account having had the weekend off.
2. Tuesday - building - industrial deliverys and receipts are at a slightly higher volume than Monday.
3. Wednesday - higher volume than Tuesday
4. Thurday - much higher volume than the preceeding days, Industry knows that Friday is coming and they are trying to get all their commitments completed by close of business on Friday.
5. Friday - Frantic - Shippers are shiping all the product they are capable of so they can tell their customers that they shipped it by the end of the work week.
6. Saturday - for the railroads this is a catch up day, crew's permitting. Thursday, Friday and Saturday will have higher volumes of Road Trains as the carriers attempt to play catch up with the increased volume of shipments that were tendered on Thursday and Friday.
7.Sunday - Sunday is an either/or day....If the carrier was successful in moving all the backlogged traffic on Saturday....Sunday is calm, cool and colletecet.....if not - it is a continuation of Saturday in the attempt to get the backlog worked off and be able to go into Monday with a current slate of traffic to handle.
Derailments, Weather Issues and Seasonal variations will also affect traffic.
