According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 31.0 million tons in May, up 12.1 percent from the same month last year.
In May, freight originating in Canada increased 11.8 percent from the same month last year to 27.8 million tons. Non-intermodal freight increased 10.5 percent to 298,000 carloads in May. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totaled 24.6 million tons, up 11.4 percent from the same month last year.
Tonnages of wheat (+40.1 percent), fuel oils and crude petroleum (+95.1 percent), potash (+25.2 percent), coal (+9.4 percent) and iron ores and concentrates (+4.5 percent) were up in May compared with the same month last year.
Conversely, tonnages of canola (-5.1 percent), newsprint (-24.7 percent), other cereal grains (-8.2 percent) and sand, gravel and crushed stone (-8.6 percent) shipped by rail declined in May on a year-over-year basis.
Intermodal freight loadings rose 12.6 percent to 210,000 units from May 2016 to May 2017. The gain stemmed from a 12.5 percent increase in containers-on-flat-cars and a 23.2 percent gain in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 14.5 percent to 3.2 million tons.
Freight traffic received from the United States rose 15.4 percent to 3.2 million tons as a result of a 17.7 percent increase in non-intermodal freight and an 8.6 percent decline in intermodal freight from the United States.