Canadian Rail Traffic Dips in April

OTTAWA - Jun 25/14 - SNS -- Canada's railways handled,0.8% less freight than last year during April, despite strong gains in traffic received from the United States.

Total freight handled during the month was 30.0 million metric tons (MT), according to Statistics Canada.

Domestic rail freight originating in Canada and destined within Canada and other parts of the world declined 2.1% to 26.5 million MT. These shipments are composed of non-intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via box cars or loaded in bulk) and intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via containers and trailers on flat cars).

Non-intermodal freight decreased 3.2% to 288,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 23.8 million MT, down 3.2%. Among the commodity groups that posted the largest declines in shipments were iron ores and concentrates (down 479,000 MT), coal (down 429,000 MT), potash (down 353,000 MT), lumber (down 130,000 MT) and wood pulp (down 125,000 MT).

Although most commodity groupings fell during the month, a number of groupings, particularly those of an agricultural nature, had strong increases. These included colza seeds (up 422,000 MT), wheat (up 271,000 MT) and other cereal grains (up 120,000 MT).

Intermodal freight loadings rose 9.8% to 184,000 units in April. From a tonnage perspective, traffic grew 8.5% to 2.8 million MT. The gain stemmed from both increased containerized cargo shipments and trailers loaded on flat cars.

Traffic received from the United States advanced 9.6% to 3.5 million MT. The rise in tonnage was brought on solely by increased shipments of non-intermodal freight.