08/20/2026
THE RAIL WASN’T JUST CONVENIENT — IT WAS PART OF HOW WE KEPT VANCOUVER ISLAND FED.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the railway and just how much our business relied on it for so many years.
At our mill, we had a four-car rail siding, and the railway would switch our cars out twice a week. That meant roughly eight rail cars of grain a week coming directly to our facility.
For the most part, that was enough to keep our mill running.
Sure, we still had to bring in the occasional truckload to fill a gap, but rail was the backbone of moving grain efficiently to our mill.
And trucking looked a lot different back then too.
Years ago, if you brought a truckload of grain over from the Lower Mainland or all the way from the Prairies, it was important for that truck to have something to haul back. Some carriers used convertible trailers — the sides could be configured to haul grain to the Island and then folded down so the truck could reload with lumber for the return trip.
That mattered.
Two industries were essentially helping share the transportation costs.
Today, most of the grain trucks coming to us are hopper-bottom, hard-sided trailers. They’re excellent at hauling grain, but once they’re empty, there isn’t much they can haul back.
And truthfully, with so many mills and industries gone from Vancouver Island, there simply isn’t as much return freight available anymore.
So today, we pay 100% of the freight cost to bring that grain to the Island.
And that freight isn’t cheap.
A truck carries approximately 44 metric tonnes of grain. Bringing grain from Alberta can cost roughly $160–$180 per metric tonne in freight — plus a fuel surcharge.
Do the math.
That can mean roughly $7,000–$8,000 in freight for ONE truckload, before the fuel surcharge — and that’s separate from the actual cost of the grain sitting in the trailer.
Compared with the days when rail came directly to our mill, our transportation costs can be roughly double.
That’s why, from our perspective, rail isn’t simply an alternative way of moving grain.
Rail is a key part of running an Island feed mill efficiently.
Was rail perfect? Absolutely not.
Over the years we’ve dealt with rail strikes, floods, fires and line closures. There were some incredibly challenging times when we had trucks arriving day and night just to keep enough grain coming through the doors.
But we found a way.
Because we had to.
Our mill provides an essential service to Vancouver Island agriculture. The dairy cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and countless other animals across this Island don’t know there’s been a transportation problem.
They still need to eat.
When you hit a wall trying to get grain to Vancouver Island, you don’t stop.
You find a way around the wall.
And that’s what we’ve been doing for 50 years.
Supporting Island agriculture means more than making feed.
Sometimes it means figuring out how to get the ingredients here in the first place.
Restore Island Rail Lana Popham
