Railway carloadings, May 2014
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Released: 2014-07-30
The volume of rail freight carried in Canada totalled 31.4 million tonnes in May, a 7.0% gain from the same month last year. The increase in shipments was brought on by higher volumes of domestic freight as well as traffic received from the United States.
Domestic rail freight originating in Canada and destined within Canada and other parts of the world increased 5.4% to 27.5 million tonnes. These shipments are composed of non-intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via box cars or loaded in bulk) and intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via containers and trailers on flat cars).
Non-intermodal freight advanced 5.1% to 300,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 24.7 million tonnes, up 5.2%. Among the commodity groups that posted the largest increases were those of an agricultural nature. These included wheat (up 951 000 tonnes) and colza seeds (up 508 000 tonnes). Other groupings with strong gains included fuel oils and crude petroleum (up 262 000 tonnes) and coal (up 243 000 tonnes).
Intermodal freight loadings rose 7.1% to 189,000 units in May. From a tonnage perspective, traffic grew 6.8% to 2.9 million tonnes. The gain stemmed from increases in both containerized cargo shipments and trailers loaded on flat cars.
Traffic received from the United States increased a robust 20.0% to 3.8 million tonnes. The rise in tonnage was brought on solely by increased shipments of non-intermodal freight.
Note to readers
Data in this release are not seasonally adjusted.
For non-intermodal traffic, rail carriers report the number of cars and tonnes by commodity of revenue-generating freight that they have loaded in Canada.
For intermodal freight, the carriers report the number of units and tonnes for containers on flat cars and trailers on flat cars, with no commodity data.
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