According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 31.6 million tons in June, up 2.5 percent from the same month a year earlier.
Freight originating in Canada rose 2.7 percent from the same month last year to 28.3 million tons. Non-intermodal freight increased by 5.5 percent to 312,000 carloads in June. The amount of freight loaded into these cars rose 3.4 percent from June 2017 to 25.3 million tons.
In June, due to limited pipeline capacity, the largest increase in tonnages for the second month in a row was for fuel oils and crude petroleum (+464 000 tons or +45.8 percent) on a year-over-year basis. Crude-by-rail exports from Canada rose 31.4 percent in the first six months of the year and 86.8 percent in June, compared with the same periods a year earlier, according to the National Energy Board. Tonnages also increased for potash (+291 000 tons or +18.3 percent), fresh, chilled or dried vegetables (+126 000 tons or +63.8 percent) and other oil seeds, other nuts, and other agricultural products (+125 000 tons or +112.8 percent) compared with June 2017.
Conversely, tonnages declined for wheat (-343 000 tons or -16.1 percent), sand, gravel and crushed stone (-111 000 tons or -27.4 percent), and other basic chemicals (-80 000 tons or -12.1 percent) over the same period.
Intermodal freight loadings fell 0.6 percent from June 2017 to 208,000 units in June. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic decreased 2.7 percent to 3.1 million tons.
Freight traffic received from the United States rose 1.3 percent to 3.2 million tons as a result of increases in both non-intermodal (+0.6 percent) and intermodal (+10.1 percent) freight.