Railway carloadings, July 2014
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Released: 2014-09-24
The volume of rail freight carried in Canada totalled 30.1 million tonnes in July, up 8.7% from the same month last year. Grain transportation regulations continued to be a strong factor behind the growth, with wheat shipments reaching a record volume for the month.
Domestic rail freight originating in Canada and destined within Canada and other parts of the world rose 10.9% to 26.6 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 rose 10.7% to 288,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 23.7 million tonnes, up 11.1%. The increase was attributable to gains in several commodity groupings, particularly wheat (up 1.0 million tonnes), iron ore and concentrates (up 746 000 tonnes), canola (up 557 000 tonnes), other cereal grains (up 209 000 tonnes) and fuel oils and crude petroleum (up 207 000 tonnes).
Intermodal freight loadings rose 11.0% to 189,000 units in July. From a tonnage perspective, traffic grew 9.6% to 2.8 million tonnes. The gain stemmed from both increased containerized cargo shipments and trailers loaded on flat cars.
Traffic received from the United States fell 5.2% to 3.5 million tonnes. The drop was attributable to decreased 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, 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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