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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Now once you've got the grain in a truck, does it make sense to take it to a small country elevator, then transfer it to that elevator, hold it there, then transfer it to smaller rail cars for shortline movement, then transfer it again to a larger elevator, hold it there, then transfer it to a main line shuttle train? Or do you just drive the truck to the large elevator in the first place? It will depend on the specific situation, but if I had to bet ( and I do bet on things ), I'd bet that it will be generally more efficient to just drive the truck to the large elevator. [/quote] Greyhounds, Using this logic, we could take it one step further and say that it would make more sense just to drive the truck to the deep water port instead of transloading from truck to unit train elevator. As Michael pointed out, it's all about equipment utilization, and all other things being equal the optimal economic scenario would involve using (1)truck from farm to nearest elevator, (2)branchline hoppers from that elevator to unit train elevator (wherein the grain is either transloaed from lighter hoppers to 286k hoppers, or the 264k/286k hoppers are added to the nest unit train consist), and finally (3)264k/286k unit train hoppers from unit train elevator to deep water port (or sometimes to nearest barge port, wherein the next step (3a) is barging from river port to deep water port). For those places where the nearest grain elevator has no rail access due to either prior rail abandonment or never having had rail acess, then Step 2 involves transloading from farm truck to highway truck, a much more costly move than the branchline rail option. Sometimes it is possible to load highway trucks directly at the farm, and let the unit train elevator take care of the product quality refinements. Other times it is possible that another step (1a) will be added when grain is transloaded from farm truck to highway truck at the nearest elevator without rail access, wherein the highway truck only goes as far as an intermediate country elevator that has branchline rail access where the grain is then transloaded to the branchline hoppers. It all depends on distances and time constraints involved. Yes, there is always some product degradation when it is transloaded, but I've been told by co-op reps that the product quality losses and extra costs are insignificant compared to transportation costs.
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