October 1, 2026

Canadian railways' total July freight volume was up 2.6% from July 2025

Statistics Canada reports that Canadian railways transported 31.7 million tonnes of freight in July, up 2.6% from July 2025, marking the fourth straight month of year-over-year increases. Strong growth in carloadings of grains in particular more than offset large declines in coal and potash.

The Federal Agency notes that the overall traffic also reached the third-highest level on record for the month of July, and it exceeded the five-year average for the month (30.1 million tonnes).

The year-over-year increase in total rail freight in July was attributable to higher volumes of domestic non-intermodal loadings (mainly commodities) and freight traffic from connections with American railways.

Intermodal shipments - mainly containers - originating in Canada totalled 3.2 million tonnes of freight transported, little changed from one year earlier (-25 139 tonnes). Container volume remained strong, despite disruptions to rail movements amid wildfires that delayed intermodal freight moving between eastern and western Canada in July.

Freight loadings from connections with US railways remained above the volume posted in the same month of the previous year for the fifth consecutive month, rising 11.1% year over year to 3.8 million tonnes. This jump may partly reflect re-routing of some rail traffic via American connections amid wildfires in Northern Ontario and British Columbia during the month.