Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
Steve: We're working on an all-grain issue. It's been in progress for over a year, because it's turning out to be so complicated. Grain is what I like to call "inconsistently consistent." Or, "regularly irregular." That is, there are patterns, but they are short-term and constantly shifting. This is very unlike coal, which moves highly predictably. "Unit grain train" is actually a misnomer. Until recently, there was no such thing, even though they were called that! To add to Mac's and LC's info, grain moves in the following ways: single-car: a car on an individual waybill running by itself from origin to destination, though it's probably moving with other grain loads, at least at first. 10-car block: offered by some railroads; used primarily by shippers such as small food plants that are "landlocked," and cannot expand to accept more cars at a time. These are common east of Chicago. 25, 26, and 27-car blocks: very common. Usually four of these blocks will move in one so-called "unit train" to one export elevator or feeder, though they originated at four different country elevators. BNSF uses 26-car blocks for wheat and 27 for corn (corn is slightly less dense); so you get the same number of bushels this way whether it's of corn or wheat. The idea is to bunch blocks into a single train as quickly as possible and leave it untouched as long as possible. Flour mills, ethanol plants, and corn sweetener plants commonly purchase in 26 and 27-car blocks; they are rarely large enough to take bigger blocks. 52 and 54-car blocks: also very common. Just a bigger version of the 26 and 27. Shuttle trains: 110 cars on BNSF. These are true unit trains, and move on a single waybill from a single origin to a single destination. But unlike coal, grain doesn't move in large enough quantities, consistently, that you will run them over and over and over again. So they are sold in one-train, five-train, ten-train, or monthly or yearly increments. The time increment contracts guarantee the shipper a set number of train starts in that period, on a take-or-pay basis. Shuttle trains mostly move to export elevators, feeders, and a few really big ethanol plants. The growth market is feeders and ethanol. Shuttle trains are restricted. To get a shuttle train rate, both origin and destination must be able to accept all 110 cars and the locomotives on their own track, off the main track, with just one "switch" allowed -- that is, the train must enter the track all as one. If you have to break the train apart and switch it into several tracks to get it delivered, you have more than one switch, and you cannot get the rate. The train must be loaded in eight hours or less, and unloaded in eight hours or less (those times were as of a year ago, and may have changed). There are about 250 shuttle train compliant elevators in North America. Loop tracks are becoming the standard on these now, just like a coal mine or powerplant. Adding even more confusion, railroads will (for a price) permit shipper and consignee to have multiple origin and destination points even with blocks. On Kansas City Southern, where I used to work, this was the common pattern. We'd get a 110-or-so-car "unit train" off the I&MRL. It would typically set out cars at each chicken feeder it passed beginning at Anderson, Mo., until by the time it got to Heavener, Okla., there was nothing left but the power and a Fred. But the train was not even blocks moving from one elevator to one feeder that happened to be coupled together. It would arrive all mixed up, with cars from six or seven elevators scattering to five or six feeders, and we'd have to sort it out somewhere -- usually on the main track at Pittsburg, Kans. And yet we still called this a unit train. About the only thing "unit" about it was that it was all corn in covered hoppers. Total nonsequiter here that I can't resist: The D&RGW used to have what it called "the non-unit unit train." This was a coal train that came off the Moffat every other day or so with all the spot orders and small blocks that ran to places like Coors Brewery, Ash Grove Cement in Missouri, and the powerplant at Mason City, Iowa. Its cars might have originated at every mine on the Moffat, and was of no consistent length. It also hauled the odd freight, like covered hoppers of prilled ammonium nitrate (mixed with diesel fuel, the standard explosive in open-pit mining these days) and wheat loaded at Craig. Railroad rates are based on the carload and leaves it up to the shipper to determine if they want to fill the car or not. If an elevator reaches a car's weight limit and the car is still half-empty because their wheat is wet, that's their problem. But the consignee is usually buying by the bushel, because they surely do not want to buy water. So, there you have another complication in this business. (Coal is similar: railroads move it by the ton, powerplants buy it by the BTU.) You have to convert units to figure out that if you want 100,000 bushels, you need to order so many empty covered hoppers for a given moisture content. Oh -- and the ocean shipping business sells volume. They don't care about tons. Luckily bushels and cubic feet are a simple conversion. Wheat is a little heavier per ton, so you can load to the 286,000 lb. weight limit in a 4750 cubic foot capacity car, whereas corn takes a 5161 cubic foot capacity car to make the same weight limit. The key thing to know about unit trains is that they are not a technological entity, but rather an organizational entity. The classical definition of a unit train is one shipper, one consignee, one waybill, no switching en route, and a lower rate compared to single-car. Coal works wonderfully for that. Grain simply doesn't move in large enough quantities, is too seasonal, moves in flood one day and doesn't move at all the next depending on price, has too many origin and destination points, and has too many grades as a commodity to justify true unit trains. The U.S., for instance, grows eight different types of wheat, and a flour mill mixes and matches depending on price and what type of product it wants to produce (bread uses a different type of flour than cookies, for example), whereas a power plant is designed for a very specific coal specification and can't easily or readily switch to another.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag