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QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan It seems that with Amtrak and CN getting out of the roadrailer business, Triple Crown seems to be the sole roadrailer service; is this true? What happened to the others like Schneider, Clipper and ICE COLD (Icez) of BNSF?
Karl Scribner
Sunfield Twp. Michigan
Kentucky Southern Railway
QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod This has been beaten to death -- when will you get it? Go back and read the various Amtrak M&E threads. That will explain some of the economics regarding what bottom-line 'profitability' is for a RoadRailer service. Mark Hemphill's comments, in particular, raised some of the more relevant issues for your review.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod This has been beaten to death -- when will you get it? Go back and read the various Amtrak M&E threads. That will explain some of the economics regarding what bottom-line 'profitability' is for a RoadRailer service. Mark Hemphill's comments, in particular, raised some of the more relevant issues for your review. Triple Crown has intensive railroad backing. If you know anything about six-sigma, you'll recognize the importance of a strong 'champion' in getting acceptance of innovative concepts during the time they're established, and in overcoming obstacles thereafter. For the others, RoadRailers were a niche modality -- and when typical problems, like lane balance and backhaul-by-rail, came up... they figured the results weren't worth the expense. For better or worse, many managers DO look primarily at short-run rather than long-run results. Since the collapse of the Internet bubble, three-month and six-month targets for opportunity capital have become once again 'significant' to analysts... whether or not this mindset is appropriate for long-term capital or market development. This may change given enough time, or major shifts in some of the factors involved. But right now there's a sweet spot for TOFC, and a different sweet spot for all-truck moves, and there just isn't for bi-modal where there isn't a dedication to the technology and sufficient capitalization in place. I'd be surprised to find any truck line undertaking the necessary steps at 'full equipment price' -- or in fact any shipper not affiliated with a railroad dedicated to the concept making extensive early use of the system. An important take-home message from Amtrak M&E is that 'profitability' often has to be defined in much more significant terms than 'did we make or lose money on the packages we shipped'. That's fine for someone running an eBay business, but as soon as scaling and operating factors come into play, there are many additional expenses, and reserves, that have to be arranged. I suggest that you develop a theoretical model of RoadRailer operations in a given set of lanes -- look at what's needed to source and handle your traffic, coordinate loads and scheduling, how many vans and underframes will be needed to handle the service, what you do about demurrage and loading delays, etc., and then figure out what the costs and cash flows will be. Then do a few iterations and recursion analysis to see patterns and trends, and stress the model with a few circumstances (tonnage increases or decreases, seasonal traffic patterns, railroad congestion, and weather being some to use). It helps to understand Swift if you look at the patterns for the commodities they were transporting, and the destination pairs. It may also help for you to analyze "why is the Tropicana train not a bi-modal operation"?
QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod It's not that it wasn't a nice and polite question -- just that you keep asking the same one over and over. There's no reason to 'wade through all those threads' -- most of them were started by you, and participated in by you rather avidly, so you should remember what was in them. When I said "beaten to death" I meant within the RoadRailer business threads, not in general. And yes, I responded a bit more intensively to Junctionfan than I would to most other posters, because I KNOW that he's already covered this particular issue with many questions before, and also that I've suggested that he do some of the financial and operational modeling to answer some of the question before he asks it -- repeatedly -- in the forums. Hopefully, both of you will note that (once again) I provided answers and approaches in my post which do, in fact, address the question Junctionfan asked. And will further support any positive and original thinking on the topic as the thread progresses. I am not privy to internal thinking at Schneider and Swift, so I cannot say exactly why they chose not to continue; in the specific case of Swift I am, in fact, looking forward to finding out whetner they've quit 'for good' or because there are factors that need to change for them to resume. But my point was, and is, that it's possible to figure out some of the problems from first principles, before having to ask for proprietary information (etc.) which will almost certainly not be provided for general postings!
Yes we are on time but this is yesterdays train
QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH Triple Crown is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Norfolk Southern, so there wouldn't be any investor information available on its website.
QUOTE: Originally posted by widave Do you guys that see the RoadRailers in other lanes ever see any of the Clipper reefers, Ice Cold Express or any of the other ReeferRailers at all? I was wondering if TC pursued that freight in any other lanes? Never seen one up here in WI other than on the road so far. They were very rare on Amtrak, too. Thanks, Dave
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
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