Shipping Fruit

[Last Chance]

I believe that the railroads had or used to have thier own trucking. No problem getting that load in Dodge City. Ugh.... lolz.

Thanks for a wonderful thread. Enjoyed it. Cya all on the flip side.

[greyhounds]

I have very little knowledge of RoadRailer operations and question why it is necessary to run trains consisting only of RoadRailers. Is there some technical limitation that prevents them from being tacked onto the rear of a manifest or intermodal train? If this were possible it would eliminate the problems of aggregating enough RoadRailers at any one location to justify dispatching a solid train of them. One or more could simply be added to the consist of any train at points along its route that were convenient to the origin of the loads and one or more units could be dropped off at points close to their final destination.

Mark

Forget RoadRailers.  They had their chance and they missed the market.

Think about RailMate. www.railmate.com.

RailMate has been specifically designed to operate in consists with other rail equipment.  It's been successfully tested on the CP in the USA behind manifest consists.  It delivered 46,000 pound loads that were highway legal just fine.  Its currently going though the FRSA certification process.

The prototypes are dump trailers designed to haul rock, grain, and garbage.  There will be no problem building Railmate container chassis to handle merchandise/perishables.

The problem is going to be getting the railroad operating department to make a pick up at Dodge City.

[Last Chance]

The trailers I recall were 2 inch thick planking backed by light truss of welded plates or beams along the bottom. The sides and top were even more flimsy.

Hardly something capable of withstanding those kinds of energies generated by a train.

The strongest ones I recall were the 48 foot Ravens Flatbed with the 10 foot spread. You could belly a 52,000 pound coil onto it and.... the only thing standing between your successful trip and disaster was the quality of the factory's work building such a trailer; combined with management of the 4 forces (Push, drag, lean and bounce/G loads) against that coil.

I watched normal flatcars in a train shake and shiver badly when stress is applied to them during a NORMAL train operation and those things are much stronger than my "Ravens" I would hate to see it weighted or stressed in that manner.

[rrnut282]

To have any payload left while on the highway, they were built as light as possible.  The slack action at the end of a train could tear them apart at the seams.  They obviously couldn't be at the head of a regular train as they wouldn't supply the required 800,000# buff-resistance, either.  They were fine behind passenger trains because they use tight-lock couplers with little to no slack, just like a regular road-railer connection.

[KCSfan]

If they weren't able to aggregate enough traffic to dispatch a train of roadrailers, then they mis-located their terminal or limited their rubber-tired reach for traffic or mis-marketed the service.  How is it the railroad can find enough semi trailers to fill multiple piggy-back trains, but not enough for a road-railer train?  Road-railers would make the "rubber interchange" in places like Chicago easier.

"Rubber-tired reach" is the weak point of domestic intermodal.  The costs of trucking to and from the intermodal terminals can easily double the cost of using intermodal and degrade its competitiveness vis a vis over the road trucking.  RoadRailers can mitigate this problem by allowing lower cost rail terminals located near the shippers and receivers.  However....

When you go to the smaller terminals it becomes harder to aggregate trainload lots of RoadRailers so you loose while you gain.  So far, with the exception of Triple Crown, the losses have outweighed the gains.

A RoadRailer consist is one origin to one destination (Triple Crown is again an exception with their hub at Ft. Wayne.)  A domestic intermodal train allows aggregation from multiple origins/destinations.  For example, a westbound domestic intermodal train originating at Chicago will carry freight originating in Chicago, and New York, and Toronto and Norfolk, etc.  The loads can be destined to several destinations;  Phoenix, Fresno, and Stockton for example

As long as RoadRailers are restricted to RoadRailer only consists, you can't readily do this with RoadRailers.   

I have very little knowledge of RoadRailer operations and question why it is necessary to run trains consisting only of RoadRailers. Is there some technical limitation that prevents them from being tacked onto the rear of a manifest or intermodal train? If this were possible it would eliminate the problems of aggregating enough RoadRailers at any one location to justify dispatching a solid train of them. One or more could simply be added to the consist of any train at points along its route that were convenient to the origin of the loads and one or more units could be dropped off at points close to their final destination.

Mark

[rrnut282]

How many road-railers does it take to make a train?  Does it have to run daily?  Remember they are limited to 150 maximum, so you can't have too many shippers at one time, and you have to turn some away or run another section.  NS did that a lot when they were restricted to 75 units per train. 

 Why can't they run short "collecting" trains (ala locals) to a Left Coast hub and then run the aggregated train cross-country?  There could be a terminal in Denver or Pheonix, Dallas, Kansas City and on to Chicago.  Dallas and KC are already on TC's route map.  I have seen Triple Crown trains as short as 40.  I don't know what their "break-even" point is as far as trailer counts, so I can't say if they lost money on that run or not.  I'd guess the break-even point varies on the length of the run and how good the highway is between those points.

[Last Chance]

Yes, that was the triple T I referred to.

The age of the Independant offering complete service is fading fast. Even the large modern TA chain has begun to establish walk-in only delis with no sit down meals in some places. A sign of the times as far as Im concerned.

Thanks to those that kept it between the lines before I got to it.

 

[greyhounds]

If they weren't able to aggregate enough traffic to dispatch a train of roadrailers, then they mis-located their terminal or limited their rubber-tired reach for traffic or mis-marketed the service.  How is it the railroad can find enough semi trailers to fill multiple piggy-back trains, but not enough for a road-railer train?  Road-railers would make the "rubber interchange" in places like Chicago easier.

"Rubber-tired reach" is the weak point of domestic intermodal.  The costs of trucking to and from the intermodal terminals can easily double the cost of using intermodal and degrade its competitiveness vis a vis over the road trucking.  RoadRailers can mitigate this problem by allowing lower cost rail terminals located near the shippers and receivers.  However....

When you go to the smaller terminals it becomes harder to aggregate trainload lots of RoadRailers so you loose while you gain.  So far, with the exception of Triple Crown, the losses have outweighed the gains.

A RoadRailer consist is one origin to one destination (Triple Crown is again an exception with their hub at Ft. Wayne.)  A domestic intermodal train allows aggregation from multiple origins/destinations.  For example, a westbound domestic intermodal train originating at Chicago will carry freight originating in Chicago, and New York, and Toronto and Norfolk, etc.  The loads can be destined to several destinations;  Phoenix, Fresno, and Stockton for example

As long as RoadRailers are restricted to RoadRailer only consists, you can't readily do this with RoadRailers.  You would need to establish RoadRailer trains from several origins to several destinations.  Since no one has yet figured out how to handle marine containers by RoadRailer, and since truckers want to move their own trailers on the trains, this would require the establishment of dual intermodal systems - which would greatly agrivate the aggregation problem and drive expenses through the roof.

That's why it's usually more efficient to use conventional intermodal equipment than RoadRailers, and that's why it's much more difficult to aggregate into RoadRailer consists than into other intermodal consists. 

[rrnut282]

If they weren't able to aggregate enough traffic to dispatch a train of roadrailers, then they mis-located their terminal or limited their rubber-tired reach for traffic or mis-marketed the service.  How is it the railroad can find enough semi trailers to fill multiple piggy-back trains, but not enough for a road-railer train?  Road-railers would make the "rubber interchange" in places like Chicago easier.

[passengerfan]

Triple T stands for Tucson Truck Terminal one of the finest truck stops in the country. As I see more and more of the independent truck stops swallowed by the majors it is only a matter of time until price fixing (price gouging) will be taking place.

Al - in - Stockton

[Expresslane]

  I'm not sure what Last Chance was talking about but the Triple T is a truck stop neat Tucson AZ. It is one of the last independent truck stops in the country and not a bad place to stop. Hope they can hang on and not go with one of the big chain truck stops.

[greyhounds]

BNSF did try running trains of ReeferRailers a few years ago.

Whatever happened to those refrigerated RoadRailers?  When BNSF dropped the dedicated RoadRailer trains the equipment went into use as TOFC trailers.  They'd be pretty old by now.  Are they still being used?

Does anyone know what a "Battle Cruiser" was?  (There is a railroad point to this!)

Battle Cruisers sure sounded like a great idea.  Up to WWII navies fought each other with battleships.  These were huge vessels with big guns and lots of steel protection.  They could slug it out.  The problem was finding the other guys battleships.  To do this scouting the navies used cruisers which were faster, lighter ships with smaller guns and less steel protection.  When the cruisers found the enemy's battleships they reported back and got out of the way.

So the idea of a Battle Cruiser was born.  The concept was to put the bigger guns on a cruiser so you'd have more fire power.  The steel protection was left off to retain the high speed of the ship.  Some were built.  But no one ever really figured out how to use them.  The big guns were useless in scouting and they couldn't fight battleships because they didn't have the protection needed to stand up to big guns shooting at them.

It resulted in a disaster when the British HMS Hood, a Battle Cruiser, was forced to face off against the German battleship Bismark.  The Hood was literally blown out of the water.  Of the entire crew, only three survived.

Battle Cruisers sure sounded like a good idea, but no one ever figured out how to use them.

It's the same with RoadRailers.  The idea sure sounds good.  Seems to make sense.  But aside from Triple Crown and its special niche market, nobody has figured out how to use them. 

They've sure tried.  BNSF made a major effort and investment with its refrigerated RoadRailer service from California.  CN, UP, CSX, and ICG also started RoadRailer services and, like the BNSF, eventually shut them down.  (Amtrak doesn't count)    

While RoadRailers have advantages, primarily in reducing terminal/drayage costs and train weight, they have one huge disadvantage.  It is very difficult to aggregate and batch an entire trainload of merchandise/perishables from one origin to one destination.  When this inevitable difficulty presents itself RoadRailer service is blown out of the water, just like the Hood.

Unless and until bimodal technolgy can operate in train consists with other rail equipment RoadRailers will remain a small niche player in the market.  This mixed operation would allow the operating railroad to enjoy the advantages and minimize the disadvantage of needing to aggreate and batch and entire trainload from one origin to one destination. 

[greyhounds]

Triple Crown enjoys alot of support in the area. Should they deploy to southwestern states, I fear that there will be very little for them should something break. Coming out of Nogales into the Triple T will tear em up if they still have not patched those gigantic potholes.

What's a "Triple T"?

[ericsp]

BNSF did try running trains of ReeferRailers a few years ago.

[Last Chance]

Triple Crown enjoys alot of support in the area. Should they deploy to southwestern states, I fear that there will be very little for them should something break. Coming out of Nogales into the Triple T will tear em up if they still have not patched those gigantic potholes.

[rrnut282]

The whole time while reading through this thread, I kept thinking, "everything suggested: local truck, long-haul rail, concentrated service area with door-to-door capability, etc, has or is being done by Triple Crown."  So far, they have found a niche in the automotive parts and paper business, but it wouldn't take a lot of effort to go after the meat and fruit markets.  The only draw-back is very thin back-haul to SW Kansas and Texas.  That, and BNSF and UP don't know how to operate road-railer trains profitably like NS.

[Last Chance]

That Sir, is called LCL. (Or was it LTL? -Senior Moment.. sorry)

There is already many established LCL Houses around the USA serving many who dont have enough freight to fill a intermodal box.

[VPayne]

So why can't domestic intermodal have mid-route sorting? It seems that in an effort to simplfy the intermodal movements to near zero events, other than passing other trains and crew changes, the railroads have reduced the routing utility. What seems to be really needed is an intermodal system that can take standard plate van trailers and allow sorting quickly at mid-points.

[Awesome!]

Bottom line! The prices of food & materials is rising accross the board.

[MP173]

Interesting comment about USA being a few weeks from hunger.

Interesting article friday in WSJ about hog farmers and the squeeze they are in over higher corn prices and lack of compensation.  Look for hog production to diminish as margins are non existant was the message.

Now, with corn production seemingly dropping due to the flooding in the heartland, it might be a very intersting year.

ed

[Last Chance]

...The strong are sometimes those who run 6 days on a bag of chips and a few pints of water in a exercise of endurance until the billing gets finished and the payroll sent. Trains have advantage of putting a fresh engine, crew when the previous one goes dead on the law.

It is a very fast, fluid and mobile business. A few words over the satellite from dispatcher makes it all happen within a few minutes. I remember in the later years Ive put together a trip empty to load and then to delivery from A to B (OR multi stop LCL) within a few minutes and go and was on time more or less taking traffic into consideration.

I depended on 10 PM to 6 AM to put the miles away between any city end to end. Traffic is a liability. Once in a while Convoys of several dozen to one hundred or more just stomps the freeway flat and clears the logjams of the cars.

And you wonder why the cars are so stressed around the trucks.

Rail is sometimes too muscle bound and not very agile to make a move in my humble opinion. If I was a warehouse boss who wants this stuff sent to some market in NYC right now, I will have a big truck at the dock with one simple phone call.

Trains are going to have to find a way to strip out anything that delays them and be able to show up when that dockman gets up and calls for somebody to get this load out of the door.

Unfortunately, we have no way to slow the Country down because now, everything is JIT with no warehouse involved or excessive delays.

That ship arrives crossing the Pacific taking a month to the west coast. Everyone is patient. But once that box hits USA Dirt or pavement all want it NOW.

[jgiblin]

Truckers will remain the dominant and superior mode for a considerable amount of time regardless of other conditions.  Railroading remains inherently flawed for a number of reasons.  First, unlike most carload moves these days, truckers operate door-to-door in virtually every market.  Even the best intermodal service still consumes a substantial amount time in the terminal transload process.  Second, truckers do not interline freight.  They have none of the built-in inherent delays of interchange, not to mention all of the absurd institutional silliness created by interchange.  Even in the worst traffic, truckers can still get through Chicago in a fraction of the time it takes rail shipments, carload or intermodal.  Third, with their inherent flexibility truckers do a much better job at securing backhauls and reducing empty mileage to the lowest possible number.  No self-respecting trucker would be caught dead with the kind of empty return ratio's associated with most rail moves.  Finally, there are no government-sanctioned monopolies in the trucking industry.  Open access is simply a fact of life.  Trucking is a business where only the strong, and the smart, survive.  Railroads are getting better but always seem to be playing catch-up. 

[Expresslane]

    One thing about this is grocery companys want the very best service at a WalMart price. The railroads like BNSF seem to want to be paid right for good service but truckers and I,v done it will run a load as fast and hard as they can for the lowest dollar they can get.

[Last Chance]

Assuming 6 miles to gallon and 5 dollar desiel approx 84 cents out of that two dollar something per mile goes into just moving the stuff. Then the driver pay which I think is about 50 cents roughly for a company man makes it at least 1.30 a mile just to move the beef; never mind anything else.

I think Rail beats truck because it can move alot of tons on that same fuel. The problem is TIME.... gotta break that clock and do it faster than a team can.

They can probably establish regional locals at the plant/rail head and do it again on the other end near the Northeast and Southern Cities.

No matter how bad the fuel gets that beef needs to be moved. The USA is about a few weeks or less from not being able to eat well.

[greyhounds]

I see a couple of challenges for the movement of meat.  Not saying it cant be done, but challenges which will need to be addressed.

First, it appears the concentration of the meat packing is in two locations...Iowa and Kansas.  Do either of these locations have the infrastructure in place to establish a hub and spoke type operation for the intermodal movement of the meat?  In other words, at some location, loads would have to be consolidated in order to build trains.  Isnt Schneider running a daily train from Kansas City to Marion Oh of intermodal loads? 

Kansas might be a good location for something like this to occur.  It is right smack in the middle of the country.  Rail lines to the west coast, Chicago, the Southeast via the old Frisco line, south to DFW and Houston, to the Northwest via BNSF or UP.  What kind of intermodal staging area would be required and where would be a good location?

Would Iowa be as good a location for rail as Kansas?  Possibly for the west coast and maybe the east coast if they could get thru Chicago. 

Another challenge that I see would be the return of refrigerated equipment to Kansas and Iowa.  I am not sure how much refer business is inbound to those locations, or actually even dry freight which could move.  Deadhead issues would be a factor in pricing.

Interesting discussion.

ed

The SW Kansas concentration extends into the Texas Panhandle centered around Amarillo.  Altogether, the Kansas/Texas concentration produces 42% of the "fed beef" in the US.  (excludes old dairy cows that are no longer efficient milk producers)

Let's deal with the Iowa pork.  Nothing would kill this concept faster than trying to establish one "HUB" to handle the pork.  This market is served by an underutilized rail line, the CN's Iowa route.  It makes no sense to pay exhorbatant trucking fees to gather the pork shipments  when production is concentrated in a few plants. 

Establish low cost intermodal transfers near plants.  Use bimodal technology (I favor RailMate) for easy, low cost transfer from road to rail.  Start two trains east from Council Bluffs and Sioux City.  (you'll have to truck in from Sioux Falls, Freemont, etc.) Pick up at Denison (pork and beef) and at Storm Lake (pork).  Combine the trains at Ft. Dodge.  Pick up at Waterloo (dray in from Marshalltown) and run to Chicago.  Transfer the containers to existing intermodal service on NS and CSX.  And while you're doing this, grab any Omaha outbound dry freight that's good, even if its a load of rope.

You couldn't do this on a high density line, but that's not this niche.

Same same on the SW Kansas plants.  The BNSF has extra capacity on the line through Garden City and Dodge City.   Feed into Kansas City with that one.

Amarillo is on a high density line, so you'd have to hub out of Amarillo.

You've hit the nail squarely with the backhaul problem.  As in any transportation, there are going to be some empty, non-revenue, miles.  Whoever does this is going to just have to make up their minds to "own" the East of Chicago to Omaha/Sioux City business.

But the truckers are charging $2.45/mile from west Iowa to the Northeast and at that rate the rails can stand some level of empty return. 

[Last Chance]

Let's see.

Liberal Kansas, Fort Morgan Colorado, Garden City Kansas, Dumas Texas, Omaha NE, Waterloo and a whole bunch of others between the Divide and the Cumberland in Tenn. Mostly beef. But in the Ozarks the game becomes that of Chicken with similar problems, East Coast hams, Pork, bacon etc. and so on.

Part of the problem with Meat Loads is that they get priority but not as important as raw milk inbound to a store distribution. They want that meat NOW. Like yesterday. There is absolutely no tolerance for delay anywhere in the game. Read what I have posted in the past about days of lost time waiting for one to be loaded and ponder on that.

I once set a record from Garden City south to I40 (At the time I70 was under Chain Law and blizzards) and then to Bakersfield to Salinas. I think it was 2450 miles on the ground straight through without stopping. After a nap at (Nap = 14 hours) Bakersfield, I was shoo'ed in direct to the first dock past hundreds of waiting trucks full of thier loads at the big food place there in Salinas. The fragging I recieved on the radio was not worth it. Never again.

[MP173]

I see a couple of challenges for the movement of meat.  Not saying it cant be done, but challenges which will need to be addressed.

First, it appears the concentration of the meat packing is in two locations...Iowa and Kansas.  Do either of these locations have the infrastructure in place to establish a hub and spoke type operation for the intermodal movement of the meat?  In other words, at some location, loads would have to be consolidated in order to build trains.  Isnt Schneider running a daily train from Kansas City to Marion Oh of intermodal loads? 

Kansas might be a good location for something like this to occur.  It is right smack in the middle of the country.  Rail lines to the west coast, Chicago, the Southeast via the old Frisco line, south to DFW and Houston, to the Northwest via BNSF or UP.  What kind of intermodal staging area would be required and where would be a good location?

Would Iowa be as good a location for rail as Kansas?  Possibly for the west coast and maybe the east coast if they could get thru Chicago. 

Another challenge that I see would be the return of refrigerated equipment to Kansas and Iowa.  I am not sure how much refer business is inbound to those locations, or actually even dry freight which could move.  Deadhead issues would be a factor in pricing.

Interesting discussion.

ed

[SactoGuy188]

As improved structural materials make it possible for RoadRailer-type trailers to carry heavier loads, with the increasingly high price of diesel fuel (until diesel fuel made from biomass becomes widely available) I can see new, insulated RoadRailers being assigned to more and more perishable foodstuff transport service.

Imagine several years from now a new shipping terminal in Watsonville, CA that will aggregate insulated RoadRailer trailers loaded with fruits and vegetables from the Salinas Valley area into 100-trailer trains pulled by two SD70ACe's or two ES44AC's for shipment to destinations 800 or more miles away.

 

[jeaton]

At sometime in the 1960's, the IC did have a TOFC service for beef from Iowa to Chicago.  If I recall correctly, hanging beef was shipped in this service.  The service had been started to try to keep some of the business that had moved in reefer cars.  Near the end of the decade, the IC did an in depth study of the costs for the movement and and for many reasons concluded it was not in the economic interest to continue to offer the service.  Increasing the charges on the service was not an option because the truck competition was effectively setting the ceiling for the charges.

I don't have any way of finding or evaluating the numbers that might be in play today, but I agree that the return of some of this business to the rails might be possible.  When the IC was providing the TOFC service, they owned the reefer trailers fully equipped with the interior equipment-rails and hooks-, did the cartage and all the other services necessary to handle the business.  Just a guess, but I think that if there is a shift back to rail movement, it will follow the JB Hunt business model where the trucking companies will be the primary carrier bringing the loads to the railroads for the line haul movement.