AI Analysis: Rail industry origin and destination of transported commodities

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada Table 23100062 tracks 24 years of Canadian rail freight data (2001–2024) across 65 commodity categories and 11 origin-destination regions, comprising 126,309 records with tonnage values ranging from zero to over 330 million tonnes. Total rail tonnage peaked in 2019 at 330 million tonnes and bottomed out in 2009 at 235 million tonnes, likely reflecting the global financial crisis, while commodities such as Coal and Wheat consistently dominate freight volumes. The dataset is heavily right-skewed, with a median of just 1,092 tonnes versus a mean of 487,164 tonnes, and year alone shows virtually no correlation with tonnage (r = 0.008), indicating that commodity type and route are the primary drivers of volume.

Key Findings

• Total rail tonnage peaked in 2019 at 330,244,510 tonnes and fell to its lowest point in 2009 at 234,799,063 tonnes, a drop consistent with the global financial crisis.
• The dataset contains 126,309 records spanning 2001–2024, tracking 65 unique commodity categories across 11 origin and 11 destination regions, with 5,300 unique time series vectors.
• 31.3% of records (39,511) have zero values, reflecting no transport activity for many origin-destination-commodity combinations, while the maximum single value exceeds 330 million tonnes.
• The median tonnage of 1,092 tonnes is dramatically lower than the mean of 487,164 tonnes, confirming an extreme right skew in the distribution of rail freight volumes.
• Coal and Wheat rank among the top commodities by average annual tonnage, with the top 10 commodities collectively representing the bulk of all Canadian rail freight across the study period.
• Using the IQR method, 157 out of 1,549 records (~10%) were flagged as statistical outliers, with the upper threshold set at 12,334,671 tonnes, highlighting the concentration of freight in a small number of high-volume commodity-route combinations.
• The correlation between year (REF_DATE) and tonnage value is essentially zero (r = 0.008), meaning long-term time trends are weak and freight volumes are driven primarily by commodity type and geographic route rather than the passage of time.