An official website of the United States government
United States Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor
The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information,
make sure you're on a federal government site.
The site is secure.
The
https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any
information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
Producer Price Indexes
SHARE ON:
Producer Price Indexes for Line-Haul Railroads - NAICS 482111
Producer Price Indexes (PPIs) for Line-haul Railroads, which are organized according to North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) definitions, operate railroads for the transport of cargo and/or passengers over a long distance within a rail network. PPI data for NAICS 482111 date back to January 1969 and include indexes for both freight and passenger services. With the release of PPI data for February 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) incorporated administrative data from the Surface Transportation Board, in lieu of traditional survey pricing data, for the calculation of all freight rail transportation PPIs. With the introduction of this administrative data, the BLS also increased the number of detailed price indexes published for freight rail transportation. These measures are available online through the BLS website and in Table 11 of the PPI Detailed Report.
The detailed services for which Line-haul Railroad producer price indexes are available include:
- Carload rail transportation of farm products
- Carload rail transportation of coal
- Carload rail transportation of nonmetallic ores, minerals, excluding fuels
- Carload rail transportation of food and kindred products
- Carload rail transportation of lumber or wood products, excluding furniture
- Carload rail transportation of pulp, paper, or allied products
- Carload rail transportation of petroleum or coal products
- Carload rail transportation of clay, concrete, glass, or stone products
- Carload rail transportation of primary metal products
- Carload rail transportation of transportation equipment
- Carload rail transportation of all other carload rail transportation
- Intermodal freight rail transportation
- Passenger rail transportation
The primary output for freight rail transportation is the line-haul movement of a broad range of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished goods between terminals via a domestic railway network.
Carload rail freight transportation typically involves the shipment of a specific commodity by a single mode of transportation. Intermodal rail freight transportation involves the shipment of various kinds of freight from origin to destination, which may include foreign locations. Intermodal shipments include a mix of all kinds of freight, commonly referred to as “mixed shipments” by two or more modes of transportation including numerous common carriers (i.e., rail, air, truck, and marine) for a single shipment. The primary service in the rail passenger market segment is the mass transportation of passengers between cities and states (intercity and regional) via a rail network.
The BLS measures prices for freight rail transportation by calculating the revenue per ton mile for specific routes. For carload freight rail transportation, the routes are further segmented into categories based on Standard Transportation Commodity Codes.
For the freight price indexes in the PPI for the Line-haul Railroad industry, BLS utilizes a Tornqvist index calculation formula due to the inclusion of current-period quantities in the administrative data from the Surface Transportation Board. This method leads to an improved price index as the Tornqvist price index addresses substitution effects better than a fixed-based Laspeyres price index, which is typically used in the PPI. Additional information on Tornqvist index calculations is available in the Monthly Labor Review article, "Measuring the substitution effect in Producer Price Index goods data: 2002–2016."
The BLS continues to measure price changes for the index for Passenger rail transportation by tracking purchase prices by types of tickets using traditional survey data and the standard PPI modified Laspeyres formula. Types of tickets include one-way, round trip, multi-ride, thruway ticket, and rail pass ticket.
Last modified date: July 7, 2026