According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 29.8 million tons in September, down 1.6 percent from the same month last year.
In September, freight originating in Canada decreased 1.6 percent from the same month last year to 27.2 million tons.
Non-intermodal freight declined 1.6 percent to 295,343 carloads in September. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totaled 24.4 million tons, down 2.2 percent from the same month last year.
Tonnages of iron ores and concentrates (-12.4 percent), fuel oils and crude petroleum (-38.5 percent), other chemical products and preparations (-47.0 percent), and iron and steel-primary or semi-finished (-34.5 percent) shipped by rail declined in September on a year-over-year basis.
In comparison, tonnages of coal (+17.4 percent) were up in September compared with the same month last year.
Intermodal freight loadings rose 2.3 percent to just over 189,000 units between September 2015 and September 2016. The 2.7 percent increase in containers-on-flat-cars offset the 13.7 percent decline in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 3.9 percent to 2.8 million tons.