Railway carloadings

Business slipped for Canada's railways in April as slightly less freight was loaded than in March.

Overall, railways in Canada loaded 24.2 million tonnes of goods, 3.6% less than the month before.

A number of factors appear to have contributed to the decline. In particular, shipments of metallurgical and chemical products from Ontario's industrial sector were affected by the erection of a barricade across a highway and railway lines near Caledonia, Ontario. The protest disrupted traffic along a main east-west as well as a north-south rail corridor in southern Ontario. Another factor is that April has fewer days than March.

Shipments of cars and minivans also edged down, but such a decline is often observed between March and April.

Total tonnage of non-intermodal categories reached 21.8 million metric tonnes, down 3.7% from March. A total of 270,417 rail cars were needed to load all of April's non-intermodal freight.

Intermodal loadings, that is, containers and trailers hauled on flat cars, fell 3.3% to just over 2.4 million metric tonnes.

Freight coming from the United States either destined for or passing through Canada reached 2.3 million tonnes, down 6% from March.

The interruption of traffic created by the blockade may also explain, in part, the drop observed in both intermodal loadings and traffic from the United States.

On a year-over-year basis, non-intermodal tonnage was 1.2% higher than April 2005 while both intermodal loadings and traffic received from the United States were virtually unchanged.

Available on CANSIM: table 404-0002.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 2732.

The April 2006 issue of Monthly Railway Carloadings, Vol. 83, no. 4 (52-001-XIE, free) is now available from the Our products and services page of our website.

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