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[quote user="edbenton"]Futuremodal I can give you 3 110 car Elevators that each load around 4 trains a week. Ransom IL Touluca IL on the former ATSF and then there is Mendota on the old BN plus there is talk of a couple more being built in the Macomb Galesburg area in the next couple years with all the ethanol plants going up need to provide them with the squeezins to make it.  I have pulled a roadrailer and they flat out weigh 1 thousand pounds heavier than a standard plate side trailer.  The old mark 4 with a intergrated alxe set was one ton that is 2000 lbs heavier.  I also talked to my friends in management at Swift Transprotation the real reason not the dribial you are spouting the BNSF jacked the rates way up is the fact that Swift pulled the train off so they could use the trailers to give there drivers some more miles.  There is a different concept a trucking company pulling loads off a railroad to give around 100 drivers a run of around 1000 miles each way. Remember the drivers of a company have alot of power yes a company can come up with replacements but that takes time.  Swift has around 7000 trucks and drivers were do you get that many drivers in 3 days you can not.[/quote] Ed, 1.  I'm not denying that Midwestern interests are building 110 car shuttle facilities.  I said that it is likely many of those entities are some of the same ones that got burned by BN/BNSF who convinced them to invest in 26 car and 52 car shuttles, only to lose service to those facilities long before they could be depreciated out.  It has happened here in the PNW and through the Northern Tier, so I expect it has also happened in the Midwest.  Michael has made a counterpoint that in fact BNSF still serves certain Illinois small carlot elevators, even one that only has a single car spur. 2.  RoadRailers have about 800 lbs of tare over standard trailers: <A href="http://www.triplecrownsvc.com/Equipment.html">http://www.triplecrownsvc.com/Equipment.html</A> 3.  Why on earth would Swift pull the extrememly low labor utilization of the RoadRailers "so they could use the trailers to give there drivers some more miles" as you say, when all the trucking companies have been dealing with a severe driver shortage for the last decade? <A href="http://www.thetrucker.com/showstory.aspx?id=10750">http://www.thetrucker.com/showstory.aspx?id=10750</A> As for the "real" reason the Swift RoadRailers were discontinued, here's an old trainorders discussion on the topic that pretty much resembles the one we got going here: <A href="http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1135255">http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1135255</A> No one knows who these folks are, so we can't discern who's the insider(s) and who is not.  But there seems to be a consensus regarding the new rate proposal by BNSF, which may have included a desire by BNSF to terminate the RoadRailers in Bakersfield rather than down in LA.  Swift of course wanted to get as close to the population center as possible to keep the local dray relatively short.  A Bakersfield to LA dray was and is just too long.  BNSF also seemed to have a hard time keeping the schedules, and it's commitment for the terminals for the I-5 traffic seemed secondary to the committment BNSF showed for the transcon traffic.
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