Carloads or unit trains?

[Anonymous]

Some Class 1's are trying to convert as much traffic as possible to unit trains, while others are trying to move everything in scheduled manifest trains. Which is better? Will the unit trains roads sacrifice some carload freight? What do scheduled operations lose in unit-train efficiency?

[kenneo]

Depends on what the product is and the volume it is moving in. Single carload shipments (aka "loose cars") are the most expensive method to utilize rail transportation. Unit trains, conversly, are about the cheapest. But if all you have is one carload of widgets a day, and today it goes here, tomorrow there and the next day somewhere else, it is going to take a very long time to gather together 100 cars from your plant to any one of your customers. A mine, for instance, shipping from one point to perhaps three different points and able to load one train a day, can ship by the train load lot (unit train).

Scheduled operations, one of the best methods of keeping the "retail customer" (the single car shipper/receiver) must run on time whether or not there is sufficient traffic to justify a train. Even if you combine trains, you then have a power and crew imbalance so you either have to run the train anyway, deadhead the crews and power, or run cab hops --- excuse me, no more cabeese, -- light power. Unit trains do not have that problem.

[Puckdropper]

One thing that was pointed out in Model Railroader (Feb 2004) was that an engine can move 20 cars as one move or move 20 cars as one move. If the destination is such many cars can be moved to one single location, it really saves time compared to moving each car to a new destination.