June 4, 2019

Canadian rail freight volume decreased 1.5% in March

Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried a total of 31.5 million tonnes of freight in March, down 1.5% from the same month a year earlier.

The Federal agency reports that total rail freight originating in Canada rose 0.9% from the same month in 2018 to 28.7 million tonnes in March.

Non-intermodal freight increased 0.1% to 314,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars rose 1.0% from March 2018 to 25.5 million tonnes. The commodities with the largest increase in tonnage were iron ores and concentrates (9.4%), gaseous hydrocarbons, including liquefied petroleum gas (38.9%), fuel oils and crude petroleum (9.5%) and coal (3.7%). Tonnages declined for other cereal grains (-33.3%), wheat (-8.6%), colza seeds (canola) (-13.7%) and other oil seeds and nuts and other agricultural products (-41.2%).

Intermodal freight loadings decreased 2.9% from March 2018 to 211,000 units. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 0.6% to 3.2 million tonnes.

Freight traffic received from the United States declined 20.7% to 2.8 million tonnes as a result of a 21.9% decrease in non-intermodal freight.