According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 30.8 million tons in August, up 3.2 percent from the same month last year.
Freight originating in Canada increased 1.5 percent from the same month last year to 27.5 million tons. Non-intermodal freight held steady at 293,000 carloads in August. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totaled 24.3 million tons, up 0.6 percent from the same month last year.
Tonnages of wheat (+27.3 percent), fuel oils and crude petroleum (+28.1 percent), potash (+14.1 percent), coal (+3.7 percent), and iron and steel, primary or semi-finished (+25.1 percent) were up in August compared with August 2016.
Conversely, tonnages of iron ores and concentrates (-6.9 percent), fresh, chilled or dried vegetables (-39.4 percent), other cereal grains (-40.2 percent), canola (-32.1 percent), and lumber (-10.2 percent) shipped by rail declined in August on a year-over-year basis.
Intermodal freight loadings rose 7.0 percent to 214,000 units from August 2016 to August 2017. The increase stemmed from a 7.2 percent increase in containers-on-flat-cars and a 0.2 percent decrease in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 8.9 percent to 3.2 million tons.
Freight traffic received from the United States rose 20.8 percent to 3.3 million tons as a result of a 25.0 percent increase in non-intermodal freight and a 16.7 percent decline in intermodal freight from the United States.