TORONTO, Ont. — As reported earlier, CN has managed to scrounge up enough extra people (including O/Os) and equipment to continue clearing its backlog at the Brampton Terminal.

CN officials say the backlog has been now been cut to about half of its original size and is down to some 1700 containers.

CN was disappointed however, when only 30 trucks showed up to pick up this Sunday.

Truck drivers and carriers say they have nowhere to bring their loads once they pick them up.

So the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association is urging its members to determine which of their customers can receive containers during the weekend and make arrangements accordingly.

“A sincere effort must be made to assist CN in achieving a major breakthrough in volume reduction, otherwise, the backlog will start anew since much volume is expected to arrive within the next weeks,” says a news bulletin from CIFFA.

“Multiple Container shipments ought to be targeted first to help make a real dent in the still existing backlog. Also, to help avoid the Monday morning bottleneck, reservations ought to be made early through the cartage company to allow CN proper staging of the containers and by using weekends (especially Sundays) to extract the loads.

“Please understand that if our industry cannot help this situation we will most certainly make it worse, and if we make it worse then we must expect greater difficulties and possibly much higher costs. So please urge your customers to make special arrangements and to accede to Saturday/Sunday operations as an exception,” says the news bulletin.