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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - One closed mine and a general slowdown in production have trucking companies feeling the drop in shipments this year along the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter road.

A shot of trucks along the winter ice road in 2007. That year a record 11,000 loads were shipped. - photo courtesy of Tom Hoefer

"They're dropping loads per truck. The mines are cutting back because of the economy and we're all affected - some worse than others," said Blair Weatherby, president of the NWT Motor Transport Association.

"Some (companies) didn't even get contracts this year," he added.

The winter road opened Feb. 2 and has already completed 10 per cent of its shipments - right on schedule for this year. The number of those on-time shipments, however, has gone down.

Out of the four main sites along the road, Tahera's Jericho Diamond Mine has closed its doors, De Beers Canada's Snap Lake Mine has completed construction and Rio Tinto's Diavik Diamond Mine has delayed production at its new underground mine.

In other words, total tonnes being shipped to the mines has dropped to an expected 200,000 tonnes from 245,000 in 2008. Mining companies were originally expecting to ship 245,000 tonnes this year as well.

"It's about 45 thousand tonnes less than what was predicted at the beginning of the year. It's a reduction but it's nowhere near what people are saying," said Erik Madsen, director of the winter road, responding to rumours the amount of shipped tonnes had dropped by half.

Madsen added the DeBeers-BHP Billiton-Diavik joint venture managing the road prefers to go by tonnages instead of loads to indicate how much cargo is shipped up, as more tonnes can be put into a load once ice thickens. Even so, the committee has had to adjust its original prediction for loads crossing the icy expanse to the mines to 6,300 from 7,200.

The secondary route from Bluefish Lake to Gordon Lake was not constructed simply because there was no need.

Weatherby said he suspected the decrease will affect southern truckers more than Yellowknife truckers, for various reasons. For starters, there typically aren't enough Northern truckers, and the policy of prioritizing Northerners over southerners means most cuts are dealt to those flying up. Small companies are expected to feel most of the heat, as they largely employ southerners.

Weatherby himself only employs those living in Yellowknife at his company, Weatherby Trucking.

"Whether you're down a dollar or a million dollars depends on what you start off with," said Weatherby.

Typically, he said, trucks will get 20 to 25 loads in a typical winter road season. This season "they've dropped down to eight to 10 loads per truck, possibly, this year," he said.

Mining companies have been contracting fewer trucks, he added.

The outlook for truckers today is not all negative. "If you go back five or 10 years, we're still (shipping) more than we were then," said Weatherby. During that time frame load numbers were anywhere from 6,000 to 2,000 lower.

Madsen would not comment on whether the decrease was due to economic woes at the mines. "My job is to build the road," he said. "I've been told this many loads (will need to be shipped). And that's what we're doing, we're building an ice road for them to handle that many loads."