- Canadian National Railway (CNI +1.4%) issues a notice to forestry customers that it is unable to take all their lumber shipments because of a backlog building at west coast container terminals.
- The lumber has been stuck in warehouses along British Columbia's coast after hundreds of truck drivers that drive containers filled with forestry products to Port Metro Vancouver walked off the job Monday.
- Lumber prices have not yet been affected, but the bottleneck means softwood lumber and other forestry products won't make it to market in the U.S. and Asia on schedule and companies who can't fulfill contracts to customers will forego revenue.
- Forestry producers already were seeing a slowdown in shipping: CNI has seen a 9.3% decline in forestry goods YTD, while smaller rival Canadian Pacific Railway (CP +1.5%) shipments have dropped 17%.