According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 31.3 million tons in October, down 0.6 percent from the same month last year.
Non-intermodal freight decreased 0.8 percent to 307,260 carloads in October. The amount of freight loaded onto these cars declined 0.1 percent from the same month a year earlier to 25.7 million tons.
Tonnages of iron ores and concentrates (-5.8 percent), fuel oils and crude petroleum (-20.4 percent), other chemical products and preparations (-53.1 percent) and nickel ores and concentrates (-72.6 percent) shipped by rail declined in October on a year-over-year basis.
Intermodal freight loadings decreased 1.7 percent to 190,737 units from October 2015 to October 2016. The 1.4 percent decrease in containers-on-flat-cars moderated the 15.9 percent decline in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic decreased 1.9 percent to 2.8 million tons.