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July 06, 2018

Canadian rail freight volume down 2.6% in April

Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried a total of 30.5 million tonnes of freight in April, down 2.6% from April 2017.

The Federal agency reports that total rail freight originating in Canada decreased 4.3% from the same month last year to 27.1 million tonnes.

Non-intermodal freight decreased by 0.8% to 301,000 carloads in April. The amount of freight loaded into these cars fell 4.8% from April 2017 to 24.1 million tonnes. This decrease was mainly due to a labour dispute at an iron ore mine that resulted in a 27.8% decline in shipments of iron ores and concentrates (-1 291 000 tonnes) compared with April 2017.

Intermodal freight loadings rose 1.1% year over year to 198,000 units in April. The gain stemmed from a 1.5% increase in containers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 0.5% to 3.0 million tonnes.

Freight traffic received from the United States rose 12.5% to 3.5 million tonnes as a result of increases in both non-intermodal (+12.0%) and intermodal (+20.0%) freight.