Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried 33.0 million tonnes of freight in October, down 5.4% compared with the same month last year.

The Federal agency reports that non-intermodal operations (carloads) were largely responsible for the shortfall in the overall volume, declining 6.0% to 26.6 million tonnes compared with the same period in 2018.

The decline was widespread across many of the commodity groups. Significant decreases were reported in potash (-34.5%), fuel oils and crude petroleum (-23.9%), other oil seeds and nuts and other agricultural products (-38.3%), canola (-13.1%) and lumber (-13.9%). Partly offsetting these declines were modest increases in loadings of wheat (+15.7%), iron ores and concentrates (+4.3%) and coal (+5.2%).

Intermodal freight traffic in Canada continued to hold steady, increasing 0.7% from the same period last year to 3.2 million tonnes.

Over the same period, freight traffic coming from U.S. rail connections decreased 5.9% to 3.2 million tonnes.

 

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