According to Statistics Canada, the volume of rail freight carried in Canada totaled 29.1 million tons in December, up 0.1 percent from the same month in 2015.
In December, freight originating in Canada decreased 0.4 percent from the same month in 2015 to 26.5 million tons. Non-intermodal freight decreased 1.8 percent to 287,000 carloads in December. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totaled 23.8 million tons, down 1.3 percent from the same month in 2015.
Tonnages of iron ores and concentrates shipped by rail declined 3.8 percent in December on a year-over-year basis.
Intermodal freight loadings rose 6.7 percent to 179,000 units from December 2015 to December 2016. The increase stemmed from a 6.4 percent increase in containers-on-flat-cars and a 21.6 percent gain in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 8.0 percent to 2.7 million tons.
Freight traffic received from the United States rose 5.5 percent to 2.5 million tons as a result of a 6.4 percent increase in non-intermodal freight and a 4.3 percent decline in intermodal freight from the United States.
For the full-year 2016, the total volume of rail freight carried in Canada reached 345.9 million tons, down 2.8 percent from the 355.7 million tons of rail freight carried in 2015.
By average weight shipped each month, the top five commodities in 2016 were iron ores and concentrates (4,401,000 tons), coal (2,646,000 tons), wheat (1,725,000 tons), potash (1,460,000 tons) and lumber (1,007,000 tons).