Rail lines are hard at work and CPKC is moving grain and getting ready for the upcoming season.
Elizabeth Hucker, the assistant vice president of marketing and sales for bulk, says they've done well ending July and starting august.
"Over the last couple of weeks, CPKC's grain volumes have been relatively consistent for this time of year. In our most recent week of August 3rd, we moved just shy of 400,000 metric tons of grain and grain products to locations like Thunder Bay, Vancouver, Eastern Canada, as well as destinations in the United States."
Empty order fulfillment has gotten some positive feedback from farmers on the prairies.
"We have been receiving great feedback from our customers on our recent empty order fulfillment, which in recent reports from the ATC has had CPKC's performance in excess of 90% for the last several weeks."
Hucker says that they've had no challenges over the past two weeks, mainly focused on getting ready for next year's crop.
In the short term, they're taking a look at what this year's harvest might bring.
"On July 31st, actually just a week ago now, we submitted our Grain Outlook report to the Canadian government, which looks towards the upcoming crop year and what. CPKC does in order to get ready to move the grain."
"One of the most important things that we do is we work very closely with our customers to get forecasts for next year and they're estimating the crop size to come in. We do things associated with proactive estimates of resource planning based on that feedback so that we can get ready to move the crop."
A possibility of a strike on Canadian rail lines still looms overhead for CPKC with Hucker saying they're keeping a close eye on the situation.
"CPKC has published a series of updates concerning the TCRC negotiations in the recent months and weeks, including our most recent update on August 5th. All of that information is available at www.cpkcr.com, and I'd encourage your listeners to visit our website for ongoing updates."