According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 30.1 million tons in January, up 3.0 percent from January 2017. The gain was largely attributable to a 25.5 percent increase in traffic received from United States connections.
Freight originating in Canada increased 0.7 percent from the same month last year to 26.7 million tons. Non-intermodal freight fell by 0.6 percent to 288,000 carloads in January, while the amount of freight loaded into these cars rose 0.3 percent to 23.7 million tons.
In January, the commodities with the largest increase in tonnage were other cereal grains (+252 000 tons or +97.2 percent), wheat (+209 000 tons or +14.1 percent), coal (+204 000 tons or +7.8 percent), iron ores and concentrates (+166 000 tons or +4.0 percent), and fuel oils and crude petroleum (+130 000 tons or +12.4 percent) compared with January 2017.
Intermodal freight loadings rose 3.3 percent from January 2017 to 197,000 units in January. The gain stemmed from a 3.4 percent increase in containers-on-flat-cars, as the number of units for trailers-on-flat-cars fell by 6.5 percent. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 3.8 percent to 3.0 million tons.
Freight traffic received from the United States rose 25.5 percent to 3.4 million tons, as a result of increases in both non-intermodal (+26.1 percent) and intermodal (+18.0 percent) freight.