Canadian Railcar Loadings up in August

OTTAWA - Oct 27/04 - SNS -- The volume of freight carried by Canadian railways increased 1.3% in August to 21.9 million metric tons (MT) of freight, according to Statistics Canada.

Non-intermodal freight totalled 19.6 million MT, compared with 19.3 million MT last month. Just over 251,000 carloads were required to carry the freight.

Colza seed loadings dropped 72% from July to a record low of 83,000 MT. Other cereal grains also showed lower volumes of loadings than those normally seen in August because of cool and wet weather in the Prairies that have slowed the development of most crops.

On the up side, manufacturing activities, such as the automobile sector, resuming from summer slowdowns showed back to normal volumes in August.

Iron ore loadings remained lower than usual as the work conflict in that sector has not been resolved.

The intermodal portion, that is, containers and trailers hauled on flat cars, fell 3.5% from July. Intermodal loadings totalled a little more than 2.2 million MT in August, and accounted for 9.3% of the total tonnage loaded.

Freight arriving from the United States, either destined for or passing through Canada, totalled 2.1 million MT, about the same as July.

Compared with August last year, non-intermodal tonnage showed a 5.5% increase even though iron ore loadings were down 1.6 million MT because of the ongoing strike in Labrador and northern Quebec. Coal, wheat and lumber increased 1.3 million MT from August of last year. Intermodal traffic increased 5.0% and traffic received from the United States rose 10.2%, perhaps a reflection of a strong Canadian dollar.

On a year-to-date basis, the cumulative total for non-intermodal loadings for the first eight months of 2004 grew 8.7% compared with the same period last year. Tonnage grew from 151 million MT in 2003 to reach 164.1 million MT in 2004, mainly the result of stronger loadings of wheat, cereal grains and potash which accounted for a 6.5 millions tonne increase. Iron ore loadings, reduced by an ongoing strike, fell 3.3 million MT from last year.

Intermodal loadings increased 3.3% to 17.8 million MT, while traffic received from the United States was up 3.8% over the same period to 17.7 million MT.