Grain movement on CPKC lines has bounced back

CPKC's Assistant Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Bulk Elizabeth Hucker says the rail network has bounced back following last month's work stoppage but it will still take more time for supply chains to fully recover and car cycles to normalize.

She says since that work outage in grain shipping week 3 CPKC has seen a steady increase in demand for rail services to locations like Thunder Bay, Vancouver, Eastern Canada, the United States and Mexico.

"In Week 6 we moved just shy of 650,000 metric tons of Canadian grain and grain products and that was actually the highest week since September of 2023. "

She says their operations team and more broadly, the CPKC organization have been focused on getting the network back to normal, adding that they've had some positive feedback from grain shippers about how they've been able to mobilize.

"So we have seen a steady ramp up since week four and are staying close with our customers. With regards to the corridors in which they need the empties for whether they're shipping to export through Vancouver or Thunder Bay. But like I said, we've seen a steady improvement over the last couple of weeks." 

Hucker noted that on September 15th, CPKC  hit a weekly unload record of 1100 cars at Pacific Elevators in Vancouver. Their previous record was 1017 which had been in place since October 18th, 2020.

"I think you know that is a testament to the work that we're doing out of Vancouver and the recovery that we've seen in the grain shipping supply chain." 

In the coming weeks, CPKC will be announcing the winners of their Elevator of the Year in Canada and the United States.

 Last year's winners in Canada were Vitara at Weyburn, and in the United States with Elbow Lake Co-op.