Monthly railway carloadings

In June, loadings on Canadian railways (excluding intermodal loadings) totalled 236 thousand cars and 18.5 million metric tonnes, a drop of 5.4% in tonnage compared with June 2002.

Non-intermodal traffic dropped 8.8 million tonnes in the first six months of 2003, compared with the first half of 2002. This represents a 7.2% decrease, which is mainly the result of a 3.3 million tonne decline in wheat and cereal loadings and a 2.4 million tonne drop in coal loadings. Forestry products such as logs, wood chips and lumber decreased 0.9 million tonnes. Overall, almost two-thirds of the commodities posted a drop in tonnage from 2002. Among the goods that increased, potash loadings were up half a million tonnes. Fuel oils and crude petroleum along with gaseous hydrocarbons, including liquid propane gas, posted a gain of a little over 0.7 million tonnes. Metallic waste and scrap were up 0.3 million tonnes. Sulphur was consistently up 6% for the first half of both 2002 and 2003.

The cumulative total for the first half of 2003 (excluding intermodal loadings) reached 112.8 million tonnes compared with 121.6 million tonnes in 2002. The variation was down only 0.2% between 2002 and 2001. Traffic from US connections went from 12.9 million tonnes to 15.3 million tonnes, up 18.3%. Intermodal traffic gained just over one million tonnes for a total of 12.9 million tonnes, from 11.9 million tonnes in 2002.

Non-intermodal tonnage dropped from 19.2 million tonnes to 18.5 million tonnes from May to June 2003. Coal, potash and nickel ores were the most important contributors to this decrease, making up almost 0.7 million tonnes. A strike caused a 97% drop in nickel ore loadings. A rise of 0.6 million tonnes in iron ore, wheat, other non-metallic minerals as well as sand gravel and crushed stone helped to offset the drop.

Loadings for intermodal traffic (containers on flat cars and trailers on flat cars) increased 5.8% from the same period of 2002 but dropped 7.2% from May 2003, totalling 2.2 million tonnes.

Loadings originating from the United States reached 2.5 million tonnes, down 2.9% from May.

Available on CANSIM: table 404-0002.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 2732.

The June 2003 issue of Monthly railway carloadings, Vol. 80, no. 6 (52-001-XIE, $8/$77) is now available.

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Jean-Robert Larocque (1-866-500-8400; fax: 613-951-0009; transportationstatistics@statcan.gc.ca), Transportation Division.