It sucks to be served by CP
The performance of CP Rail has been nothing short of terrible. Some observers say that CP has never really recovered since the washout of its mainline at Maple Creek last summer. There have also been some avalanche issues over the winter. However, snow in the mountains is a usual occurrence. All the numbers show that CN has dramatically outperformed CP through the entire crop year. Grain companies located on CP lines have been slow to receive cars and slow to even get contract calls and that has farmers on those lines way behind in their grain deliveries. While observers say that CP is starting to show some improvement, it’s no exaggeration to say that the railway is a couple months behind where it should be. More grain than usual is flowing to CN lines as producers scramble to move some product. Usually this means extra trucking costs and the grain may be moving to points with higher handling charges and higher freight rates. For a lot of producers, it just isn’t practical to access a CN delivery point, so the grain remains in storage. Watch for some sort of extension to the crop year because getting all the board grains moved by the end of July would seem virtually impossible. I’m Kevin Hursh.