The number of railcars ordered by farmers - also known as producer cars - will shatter the modern record when the current crop year ends on July 31st.
The combination of a bumper crop and challenges with rail service saw farmers try to utilize producer cars to ship their grain directly to buyers.
"This has been our best year in modern history," says Garth Steidl, producer car officer at the Canadian Grain Commission. "Two years ago was our biggest year yet at just over 14 thousand applications. This year we're over the 20 thousand mark and still have a couple weeks to go before the end of the crop year."
As of this week, 15,726 producer cars had been allocated to date this crop year. That's the number of cars the CGC has requested from the railroads - not the number that have actually been spotted or shipped, as Steidl says there will be a lengthy list of applications that will not be fulfilled before the end of the crop year.
"The CGC doesn't really track when cars are spotted, but we still have a sizable amount of cars that haven't been allocated yet, which we call outstanding cars," says Steidl, noting those applications will be carried over into the new crop year at no charge and with no need to reapply.
While 20 thousand-plus applications is a modern record, there was a time when the CGC would handle more than twice as many producer car applications.
"If you go back to the early 1900s, 1908, 1909 - around there, they did 50 thousand or more producer cars, but that was before a lot of the elevators were available and so on," says Steidl.
The CGC is also moving to an online application process for the new crop year, with applications being accepted online starting on July 14th.
Source: SteinbachOnline