A short line railway that is the top shipper of producer cars in Western Canada is starving for rail cars.
Great Western Railway Ltd., which operates 550 kilometres of track in southwestern Saskatchewan, originated 1,100 producer cars in 2002-03, about one-third of total producer car shipments.
Farmer demand for producer cars is strong this year, and the railway had been hoping to ship as many as 2,000 cars from the 27 loading sites along its track, mainly durum wheat destined for Thunder Bay.
But as of mid-December, it had moved just 350 producer cars, as well as 400 cars from elevators located along its track, and the situation didn’t look like was going to improve any time soon.
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Of the 750 cars offered by Canadian Pacific Railway to the Canadian Wheat Board for movement to Thunder Bay in the week ending Dec. 13, not one was allocated by the board to the GWR.
With the Lakehead closing in a couple of weeks due to winter freeze-up, a sense of desperation was starting to take hold.
“Farmers have a right to have producer cars and we as a railway need them to survive,” GWR general manager Stacey Wallis said in an interview last week. “That’s what keeps us alive.”
Wallis said there are easily orders for more than 150 durum producer cars on the line, with some farmers waiting since mid-October for their orders to be filled.
“Now there’s two more weeks of allocation to get to Thunder Bay and they’re not giving us any cars? That’s insane,” she said.
Even 30 or 50 would alleviate some of the tension in the area, not to mention farmers’ need for cash.
Wallis said she has been told by the CWB that the railway received no cars because of car supply problems. The annual winter rail movement of big unit trains to Eastern Canada has also started and it’s difficult for producer cars to be included because of loading conditions associated with the program.
Ward Weisensel, executive vice-president of marketing for the Canadian Wheat Board, said the board had planned to provide cars to GWR once or twice prior to freeze-up, but rationing of single car orders by CPR made that impossible.
“We’re thinking through some alternatives to meet their needs, but we’ve lost a window of opportunity, no question,” he said.
Producer car proponents said if farmers are denied the ability to ship cars in a timely manner, they will be forced to cancel their orders and deliver to elevators in order to get cash.
