British Columbia is again on fire. As of August 27, 2025, the BC Wildfire Service is tracking 384 active fires, including 47 designated as "wildfires of note" requiring coordinated response and pre-emptive evacuation orders. More than 715,000 hectares have burned across the province this year, making 2025 the second-worst fire season in BC history by area burned, trailing only 2023. The BC Wildfire Service's current dashboard is being checked multiple times a day by every freight carrier running BC Interior lanes.
For Western Canadian freight, this is not just a tragic environmental story. It is a structural operational problem that has been disrupting highway movement, rail service, fuel distribution, and driver scheduling since early July. With another six to eight weeks of fire season likely ahead, carriers and shippers running BC and BC-Alberta lanes need a clear picture of what is happening and how to adapt.
This article walks through the state of play at the end of August, which corridors are most affected, and what practical adjustments shippers should be making to protect service and cost through September and October.
2025 Fire Season Snapshot
The season started hot. May and June saw unusually dry conditions across the BC Interior and Northern BC, with snowpack levels well below normal and early-season fire starts that would typically not occur until July. By late July, major fire complexes had established themselves in the Cariboo, Thompson-Nicola, and Kootenay regions. The Chilcotin Plateau fire complex alone has burned more than 185,000 hectares. Evacuation orders have affected communities including Cache Creek, Lytton (again), Williams Lake outskirts, and portions of the Okanagan.
Environment and Climate Change Canada has noted that the 2025 season has seen more lightning-caused ignitions in June and early July than in any previous year on record, a pattern consistent with the prolonged drought and extended heat waves that the province has experienced. ECCC's wildfire indicators document the longer-term trend toward more extensive fire seasons in Western Canada.
Highway Closures and Reroutes
Highway 97
Highway 97, the north-south backbone of the BC Interior that connects Osoyoos through Kelowna, Kamloops, 100 Mile House, Prince George, and on to the Yukon, has had multiple closure events this summer. Fire activity east of Cache Creek and north of Clinton has repeatedly forced full closures for 12 to 48 hour windows. When Highway 97 closes, the alternate routes (Highway 5A, Highway 24, Highway 1) are longer, slower, and in many cases themselves periodically affected by fires.
For carriers running BC Interior lanes, the practical effect is that any lane that touches Highway 97 between Kamloops and Prince George now needs a 12 to 18 hour transit time buffer built into delivery commitments. Kelowna-to-Prince George, which typically runs 7 to 8 hours, has been taking 10 to 14 hours on affected days. Kamloops-to-Prince George, normally 6 hours, has run as long as 11 hours with detour routing.
Highway 1 (Trans-Canada)
Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon and the Shuswap has seen sporadic closures due to fire activity and smoke-related visibility restrictions. The DriveBC traveller information system is the authoritative source for real-time closures, and carriers running Vancouver-to-Alberta lanes should be checking it every 2 to 3 hours during peak fire activity.
Regional Highway 3 and 3A
The southern corridor through the Okanagan and Kootenays has seen intermittent closures near Keremeos, Grand Forks, and Castlegar. Alternate routing through Highway 3 is often the fallback when Highway 1 is affected, so when both corridors have simultaneous issues, carriers face route planning challenges that can add 3 to 5 hours to transit times.
Rail Disruption on the CN and CP Lines
Rail service has been impacted by fire activity and smoke conditions multiple times this season. Both CN and CPKC (formerly CP) have had to suspend operations temporarily through affected corridors, particularly along the CN mainline through the Fraser Canyon and CPKC's route through the Thompson Valley. Delays of 6 to 18 hours on affected trains have been common.
For intermodal shippers, these delays push freight from rail to truck, further increasing demand on BC highway capacity during weeks when highway capacity is also constrained. The result is a compounding effect: fewer trucks available, longer transit times, higher spot rates on BC-to-Alberta and BC-to-Prairies lanes. Reports from the Railway Association of Canada have flagged the operational impact of repeated wildfire-related service interruptions on Western Canadian freight logistics.
"When rail and highway both get hit simultaneously by the same fire, the only fallback is time. There is no third mode for BC-to-Alberta freight. Shippers who did not build buffer into their schedules are eating the delay."
Fuel, Capacity, and Driver Fatigue Issues
Fuel Distribution
Fuel terminals and distribution points in the BC Interior have been affected by fire activity near Kamloops and in the Okanagan. Some smaller independent truck stops have had to close temporarily, and major stops have seen fuel availability constraints on certain days. Carriers running long BC Interior routes should plan fuel stops conservatively and be prepared to carry extra fuel reserves where legally possible.
Capacity
BC Interior freight capacity is stretched. Local carriers based in Kamloops, Kelowna, and Prince George are dealing with driver availability issues (drivers with family affected by evacuations, equipment staging challenges from evacuated areas, and the general operational strain of extended disruption). Carriers running into BC from outside the province are reluctant to commit equipment to uncertain return trips if they are worried about being stuck north of a fire closure.
Driver Fatigue and Hours of Service
The unpredictable transit times from detour routing and delays are pushing drivers toward hours-of-service limits earlier in the day than planned. A driver whose planned 10-hour drive turns into 14 hours because of a detour is legally required to take rest before continuing, which can cascade into missed appointments at destination. Dispatch teams running BC Interior lanes in August have had to build in significantly more flexible delivery window expectations with customers.
The Forest Products Lane Specifically
BC forest products are the most directly affected freight category. Logging operations, sawmills, and pulp mills throughout the Interior have had to suspend operations during high-fire-risk conditions. Some mills have temporarily idled due to combined pressure from fire risk, evacuation orders affecting workers, and log supply disruptions. Outbound lumber shipments from BC Interior mills are running below normal volume, and the timing unpredictability makes committed scheduling difficult.
For shippers moving BC forest products to US markets, this compounds the softwood lumber duty environment. Reduced supply plus tariff overhang is pushing delivered lumber pricing in US markets higher even as BC producers struggle to ship. For buyers on long-term contract commitments, the force-majeure conversations are active and contentious.
What Shippers Should Do Through Fire Season
- Build transit time buffer into delivery commitments. Any BC Interior or BC-to-Alberta lane should have a 12 to 24 hour buffer added to normal transit time commitments through September and into early October.
- Confirm carrier contingency plans. Ask your carriers explicitly about their wildfire contingency procedures: how they monitor closures, how they reroute drivers, how they communicate with shippers during closures. Carriers who cannot answer clearly are carriers who will drop the ball on your freight when things get hard.
- Consider staging inventory strategically. If your supply chain has seasonal flexibility, pre-positioning inventory in Alberta or Lower Mainland BC during peak fire season reduces dependence on real-time Interior movement.
- Prepare for spot rate pressure. BC Interior spot rates have been running 15 to 25% above normal during high-activity weeks. Budget accordingly and have carrier commitments in place rather than relying on the spot market.
- Monitor DriveBC and BC Wildfire dashboards. Your dispatcher or logistics lead should be checking these sources multiple times per day during active weeks. Reactive planning after a closure is always more expensive than proactive planning.
- Communicate proactively with your customers. If your freight is affected, your customers need to know early. B2B customers can usually accommodate a 12-hour delay announced in advance; a silent miss on an appointed delivery creates trust damage that outlasts the fire.
Keylink Transport is headquartered in Abbotsford and runs BC and BC-Alberta lanes every week. We monitor fire and closure status in real time, reroute proactively, and keep our customers informed. When BC gets hard, you want a carrier who runs this corridor daily.
Talk to Dispatch →The Bottom Line
BC's 2025 fire season is operationally worse than a typical year and structurally worse than the post-2017 norm. The combination of highway closures, rail disruptions, fuel distribution issues, and labour pressure on BC Interior carriers is creating the most challenging Western Canadian freight environment of the decade outside of the 2021 atmospheric river event.
There is no trick to managing this well. The carriers and shippers who navigate August and September cleanly are the ones who built buffer into their planning, communicate early, and stay adaptive on routing. The ones who assume last year's transit times and last year's reliability will hold are the ones whose customers are reading missed-delivery emails right now.
Fire season will be over by mid-October. Between now and then, every day of freight through BC Interior is a small operational puzzle. Solve each one proactively, and your customers will notice. Let a few slip by, and they will notice that too.