According to Statistics Canada, Canadian railways transported 31.2 million tons of freight in March, down 6.2 percent compared with March 2021, marking the seventh straight month of year-over-year decline.
The overall tonnage was the lowest for March since 2016, but remained just below the five-year average of 32.3 million tons for this month. While grain shipments were down substantially, carloadings of some energy products registered strong gains, tempering the overall decline.
March's decline in total rail freight was attributable to lower volumes of domestic loadings, both non-intermodal (mainly commodities) and intermodal (mainly containers). There was also a short labor disruption at one rail carrier during March.
Non-intermodal freight loadings in Canada have declined year over year for seven straight months, dropping by 9.4 percent to 23.8 million tons in March. The largest decreases were reported in agricultural and food products, notably grain, reflecting the depletion of stocks throughout 2020, along with lower crop production because of the drought across the Prairies in summer 2021.
Year over year, other decreases were reported for fuel oils and crude petroleum, with loadings down 12.5 percent (-158,000 tons) in March, the fifth month of decline in a row.
Following a 7.1 percent dip year over year in February, loadings of iron ores and concentrates―feedstock for the production of steel—picked up again in March, rising 12.6 percent (+551 000 tons), driven by the high demand for steel. As reported earlier in the Monthly Survey of Manufacturing, sales of primary metals grew 19.1 percent year over year to a record level of $5.8 billion in March.
In March, intermodal shipments—mainly containers—originating in Canada declined year over year for the seventh straight month, falling 9.6 percent to 3.1 million tons this month.
In March, freight traffic from connections with US railways once again helped to offset the overall decline in loadings, rising sharply year over year by 20.8 percent to 4.3 million tons. This marked more than one year of growth and the highest tonnage ever recorded for the month of March.