And a good and gracious "Moo" to all of you.
Here's an interesting piece from Mississippi State University on transporting Cattle.
http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p2577.pdf
Note that stress is inherint in transport and 1) causes weight loss, which is an economic loss; and 2) may account for the so-called "mournful sounds" made by the critters as imagined by some folks.
I have no idea, although I've tried to find the data, as to how many cattle are shipped from Mississippi cow and calf operations to Kansas feed lots.
But I do know that I once dealt with a man named Bill Gentleman who had been a cattleman and rode trains as a "drover". A drover was a person man who rode the freight trains with the cattle to ensure their proper handling. (Trains or Classic Trains ran an article on this a while back. A young man and his farmer father had sold livestock to an eastern market. They rode the trains with the stock.)
Bill told me the key was to get to know the yardmasters along the route. He said he knew he had it made when they would call him "Bill". Then he knew he could get them to make any move with his stock cars that he needed. The key, he said, was to run a "railroad within the railroad."
The livestock were long gone from the rails when Bill walked into my office. We was talkin' bananas then. But he told of a special cattle hauling railcar he actually got built. You see, Bill knew all about this shrink thing long before those Mississippi State U professors wrote about it. And Bill Gentleman knew that you could put feed and water in a railcar with the cattle to reduce the economic loss cause by the "shrink". You couldn't do that with a truck.
A truck is limited (generally) to 80,000 pounds gross. Railcars are 286,000 or more. That basically means you can put feed and water in the railcar, but not in a truck. Advantage rail. Less shrinkage = less economic loss due to transport. Bill Gentleman actually got the US Government to do something sensible. They agreed to waive the 24 hour rule if the cattle had continuous access to feed and water during transit. He told me that cattle delivered by rail in such a car would be worth $20/head more than those delivered by truck. He also said that the railroad should get every bit of that $20/head. (Think about 100 cattle in the railcar and what that means.)
I was interested in the cattle hauling thing, but I had no idea where the ICG could apply it. We stuck to bananas. Which he put on our railroad complete with banana drovers. (Actually they guy was called a banana messenger. He rode in the caboose.)
Anyway, if anyone could ever quantify the amount of cattle shipped from here to wherever, there could be a shot at some buisness here. Heck, with the double stack thing we could probably give each steer a private stall, a comfy bed, feed, water, and a drover/cowboy to sing 'em to sleep.
"By many measures, the U.S. freight rail system is the safest, most efficient and cost effective in the world." - Federal Railroad Administration, October, 2009.
I'm just your average, everyday, uncivilized howling "anti-government" critic of mass government expenditures for "High Speed Rail" in the US. And I'm gosh darn proud of that.