NS restructering Triple Crown

[BaltACD]

NS restructering Triple Crown - to autoparts between Detroit & KC - 40 jobs eliminated.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/norfolk-southern-restructures-triple-crown-services-subsidiary-300145559.html

[chutton01]

You don't need to read too deeply between the lines to see Triple Crown service will be phased out in due time in favor of regular intermodal:

The railroad will work with shippers and logistics partners to convert other business handled by Triple Crown Services into Norfolk Southern's current intermodal network. 
...
TCS will continue RoadRailer service for automobile parts between Detroit and Kansas City for the foreseeable future but will transition to containers in other NS lanes.

Guess this more or less answers a question posted awhile ago about what will happen when the existing TC Roadrailer trailer fleet wears out.

BTW, it's not 40 jobs eliminated, it's 40 jobs remaining:

approximately 240 employees. NS expects to downsize the workforce by about 200 employees by the end of the year

[BaltACD]

chutton01

 

BTW, it's not 40 jobs eliminated, it's 40 jobs remaining:

 

approximately 240 employees. NS expects to downsize the workforce by about 200 employees by the end of the year

 

 

My mistake.

[greyhounds]

It was only a matter of time.  I've been surprised that RoadRailer lasted this long.

[Murphy Siding]

greyhounds

It was only a matter of time.  I've been surprised that RoadRailer lasted this long.

 

Why do you say that?  

[greyhounds]

Murphy Siding

Why do you say that?  

We'll see how this copy comes through on the forum.

I wrote this well over 10 years ago.  It's certainly dated, but it's basic premis is still true.

The Problem with RoadRailers

 

 

            The BNSF just recently suspended operation of its “Ice Cold Express” RoadRailer trains.  The elimination of these trains, which operated between Los Angeles and Chicago, is disturbing for two reasons. 

 

First, they were targeted on the California produce transportation market.  This market is huge, long haul, and predominately moves via motor freight.  California produces about one half the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in North America.  This equates to around 500,000 refrigerated tractor-trailers leaving California each year.  Most of these trucks are on long haul runs to eastern population centers.  These truckers don’t return to California empty, they maximize their revenue by getting “backhaul loads” from those eastern cities to California.  That makes the total market, including backhauls, 1,000,000 long haul loads per year.

 

The railroads successfully handled this business for years, but were driven out in large part by Federal rate regulation.   For the DECADES since, the railroads have generally conceded this long haul business to the truckers.[ii]

 

The now defunct Ice Cold Express was a strong attempt by the BNSF to get more of this business back on the rails where it belongs.  It’s sad to see such a false start in such a worthy, important effort. 

 

Secondly, this is yet another setback for RoadRailer.  For a while, it looked as if the Ice Cold Express might be RoadRailer’s big break through.  A major railroad had made a major investment in refrigerated RoadRailer equipment for the first time.  Two intermodal marketing companies, Alliance Shippers and Clipper Exxpress, also joined the operation. These companies also made substantial investments in the service by purchasing their own

equipment to operate in the trains.  The CN established a connecting RoadRailer Service to Toronto and Montreal.  These cities are both major markets for California produce.  CSX established its own connecting service to the US east coast.  It looked as if RoadRailer might be finally on its way.

 

            Then things began to fall apart.  First, the CSX and CN connecting services at Chicago were shut down.  Now the Ice Cold Express no itself longer operates.

 

            Just what the Hell went wrong?  Why did the Ice Cold Express join the ranks of other failed RoadRailer operations?  I’m confident that I have a reasonable, logical, explanation for why the trains failed.  This explanation has nothing to do with the actual viability of RoadRailer technology as a freight transportation vehicle; nor does this explanation have anything to do with the railroads’ ability to compete for service sensitive business such as California produce.

 

            No, this logical, reasonable explanation deals with humans, not technology.  It deals with humans and their inability to grasp how to use new technology in unfamiliar ways.  That’s really the problem with RoadRailers.  Humans don’t yet know how to use them.  

 

Here’s the story.   

 

 

            From 1977 to 1985 I worked in intermodal marketing for the Illinois Central Gulf. In 1981 the ICG became the first railroad to establish regular commercial freight RoadRailer operations.  We established dedicated RoadRailer trains between Louisville, KY and Memphis, TN.  We extended the market served by these trains through over the road operations.  We ran trucks to Indianapolis and Bloomington, IN from the Louisville terminal.  We also ran trucks to Little Rock, AR from Memphis.

 

            It was our job in intermodal marketing to:  1) determine the volume of freight available in the target market, 2) identify who controlled the routing of this freight, 3) devise service and pricing packages that would put the freight on our railroad, and 4) actually get the freight on our railroad.

 

            It was generally a job that I greatly enjoyed.  I got up in the morning looking forward to work.  I left work reluctantly to go home.  I loved taking freight away from a trucker, and the ICG could do that, even with its relatively short hauls.  The railroad offered reasonably good intermodal service and had established a separate Intermodal Department, which was operated as a separate “profit center”.   Strict cost controls were in place. Equipment utilization was the rule of the day, every day.  If one of us in intermodal marketing became aware of a truckload movement on one of our “lanes”, we could generally get that freight on the railroad at a profit.

 

            But we intermodal marketing people knew this wasn’t going to happen with a RoadRailer operation between Memphis and Louisville.

 

            It wasn’t the length of the lane that scared us, even though it was less than 400 miles; a very short distance for rail intermodal to compete with direct motor movement.[iii] By necessity, the ICG intermodal department had developed expertise in competing with trucks at short distances.  The longest haul on the railroad was Chicago – New Orleans, 900 miles.  On a good day, 10 intermodal loads in each direction would be handled that distance.  That obviously wasn’t enough to justify a train, so we had to find more loads.

 

            We found those loads at shorter distances.  We found those loads between Chicago and Memphis – 500 miles; we found those loads between Memphis and New Orleans – 400 miles; and we were even finding loads, and duking it out with the truckers between Chicago and St. Louis – 275 miles.  The latter was thanks to a special “Slingshot” service made possible by the then revolutionary use of two person crews on the trains.

 

            We filled out our scheduled trains and kept the terminals busy.  A railroad is a network business and a key to profitability for a network business is to fill up the network without giving the store away.  We got pretty good at doing that.

 

            No, the short length of the haul between Louisville and Memphis didn’t bother us, what bothered us was that there wasn’t enough freight available between those two points to fill out the trains to economical lengths.

 

            But how could that be?  They made cigarettes in Louisville and they distilled whiskey in Louisville.   RCA made televisions in Bloomington, Indiana.  Think of all the people sitting around watching televisions, drinking whiskey, and smoking a cigarette. How could there not be enough freight?

 

            Easily, it was be because we could only haul an extremely small fraction of the booze, cigarettes, and televisions on the RoadRailer trains.  We could only haul the loads that were going to Memphis and Little Rock, a very small fraction of the total shipments.

 

            Why?

 

            Because RoadRailer equipment was not compatible for use in trains with other intermodal equipment, that's why.

 

 Since we couldn’t fill out the trains to economical lengths with cigarette loads for the west coast, we had to produce trains of economical size based solely on the five principal cities served.  Freight between Indianapolis/Bloomington/Louisville on the one hand and Memphis/Little Rock on the other hand was all that the RoadRailer trains could haul; and there’s simply not enough freight moving between those few points to justify daily intermodal train service.

 

We backed this finding up with freight flow data purchased from a company called Reebie Associates.  The same Bob Reebie who was behind RoadRailer had started this firm.  Reebie Associates basically took information from such sources as the Census of Transportation, government manufacturing data, per capita consumption figures, etc and produced estimates of commodity flows between geographic areas.

 

Using this data and our own market surveys, we concluded that we would have to haul one half of everything that moved between our possible origins and destinations to make the desired train sizes of 30 loads per day southbound, 20 loads per day northbound. These aren’t very big trains and that ‘Everything’ did, in fact, include everything.  It included commodities such as coal and liquid bulk chemicals that were never going to move in intermodal trailers.

 

This wasn’t going to work and those of us in intermodal marketing knew it.

 

But for whatever corporate political reasons, the trains went on anyway.  They lasted one year.  There just wasn’t enough freight between the very restricted origins and destinations.  Origins and destinations that were restricted by the fact that RoadRailers cold not operate in trains that contained other revenue equipment.

 

While the RoadRailer operation on the ICG was a commercial failure, I learned a lot from it.   Looking at other freight flow data for other origin-destination pairs I could see that the corridor targeted by the ICG for RoadRailer operation was more typical than unique.  Very few city pairs generate enough freight volume by themselves to support daily dedicated merchandise trains.

 

To deal with this situation, railroads must aggregate loads from various origins going to various destinations into economical train sizes.  For example, the BNSF Z train from Chicago to Denver also handles loads to Omaha and receives trailers and containers from many eastern origins through its Chicago terminal.  BNSF couldn’t replace the Z train with a RoadRailer operation even if it wanted to.  A RoadRailer operation could not accept the eastern origin loads for aggregation into an economical train size.  The railroad would be faced with operating two trains in lieu of one.  In addition to its RoadRailer train, it would have to operate a second expedited schedule to handle the loads that were incompatible with RoadRailers.  It is pretty evident that the need to establish such a dual operation will generally negate any economies produced through the use of RoadRailers.

 

 This ‘compatibility’ problem has continually stalled the development of RoadRailer operations since we first tried them on the ICG in 1981.

 

It’s also the same problem that another rail technology faced well over 100 years ago.

 

In his excellent book “American Narrow Gauge Railroads” George W. Hilton devotes an entire chapter to “The Incompatibility Problem”.  He starts the chapter as follows:  “The narrow gauge hypothesis had two elements:  first, the adoption of a narrow gauge would produce a variety of economies; second that the costs of incompatibility were small enough to be justified in pursuit of the economies.”[iv]

 

Substitute the word RoadRailer for “narrow gauge” and you get:  “The RoadRailer hypothesis had two elements:  first, the adoption of RoadRailers would produce a variety of economies; second that the costs of incompatibility were small enough to be justified in pursuit of the economies.”

 

It’s basically the same hypothesis and it produces the same basic problem, incompatibility.  The North American rail system is an integrated network that stretches from southern Mexico to Fairbanks, Alaska.  A lot of time, money and effort have gone into ensuring that the equipment moving through this integrated network is compatible and can be readily aggregated into economic train sizes.

 

Throw some incompatible equipment such as narrow gauge gondolas or RoadRailer trailers in to this mix and you do produce extra costs; extra costs which more than negate any efficiency produced by the equipment itself.  If you need proof of this, ponder the fact that BNSF has just shut down the Ice Cold Express and started loading the RoadRailers onto flatcars.  They did this so the RoadRailers could move as part of the cost efficient integrated network of trains on the North American rail system.

 

The BNSF didn’t quit using the trailers; they just quit using the trailers as RoadRailers.  They’re still going after that California produce market.  They just changed to using the trailers as TOFC equipment compatible with the integrated North American rail network.  The only real question is what took them so long to figure out that they needed to do this.

 

Does all this mean that the RoadRailer concept is, like the narrow gauge, doomed failure because of incompatibility?

 

Not really.  Unlike a narrow gauge gondola, a RoadRailer trailer can be made compatible with the rail network.  Amtrak runs RoadRailers behind its boxcars and passenger equipment every day.  Before it shut down the Ice Cold Express, BNSF had even gone so far as to obtain Federal Railroad Administration approval to operate its RoadRailers behind other intermodal equipment.  It can be done, but nobody except Amtrak is doing it.  Without some new thinking RoadRailer technology seems headed for the museums, right along side those narrow gauge gondolas.

 

So, does the RoadRailer technology have a place in 21^st century railroading?  I think it does; but that place isn’t operating between Los Angeles and Chicago.  The failure of the Ice Cold Express pretty much proves that.  If an intermodal technology fails on that particular lane, a lane where intermodal dominates the transportation market, that technology obviously has some real problems.  But in this case the problem is not so much with the technology; no, in this case the problem is that people don’t understand how to use the technology.

 

It all traces back to Bob Reebie.  At the ICG when Mr. Reebie was making one of his first presentations introducing the RoadRailer concept, I remember someone asking him if RoadRailers could be used in mixed consists with other intermodal equipment.  His answer was very telling.  I remember him saying: “Yes, but I hope that never happens”.  He basically went on to explain that he viewed existing TOFC operations as being of such poor quality that they were not really competitive with trucking.  His vision for RoadRailer was of a pristine high quality stand alone system unsullied by what he viewed as the poor quality of the then existing intermodal service.

 

Unfortunately, Mr. Reebie’s “vision” was subsequently imprinted on his successors who unfortunately follow it today.  While the RoadRailer organization hasn’t blocked mixed consist experiments, it certainly hasn’t done much to promote such operations.  And such operations are the only way RoadRailers can be successful on a wide scale basis.

 

It centers on the railroads’ fundamental, inescapable need to aggregate shipments into trainload lots and the fact that there are very few, if any, origin – destination pairs in North America that have the volume to support such aggregation on their own. 

 

Greatly compounding RoadRailer’s aggregation problem is the fact that in all these years no one has come up with an economical method of moving maritime containers with RoadRailers in the same consists.  Think of how goofy this is.

 

Go back to the example of the BNSF Z train serving the Chicago - Denver market. If this were a RoadRailer operation what would the railroad do with a container load of export frozen beef from a Denver area meat packer?  It would normally be a simple matter to put this container load on a train and accept the shipper’s payment.  But that’s impossible to do this without a mixed consist.  Otherwise the railroad would be faced with either:  1) turning down the load and the revenue, or 2) setting up a dual intermodal system with all the attending extra costs.  In over 25 years RoadRailer hasn’t come up with a solution to this problem.  With international shipments being such a large component of rail intermodal traffic, this is a pretty big problem to just ignore.

 

After I left the ICG I was briefly employed by RoadRailer itself.  It was the same exact drill.  We tried to develop sales leads that would allow the Southern Pacific to establish a RoadRailer operation along the Pacific coast.  Campbells Soup had a manufacturing facility at Sacramento.  We hit the same problem.  Yes, we could handle the soup going to Los Angeles.  But no, the soup for Phoenix couldn’t go on the train.  Using RoadRailers the SP would have had to either:  1) turn down the Phoenix loads and their revenue, or 2) establish a dual intermodal system with all its extra costs.

 

A mixed consist operation would have allowed the SP to enjoy the economies of RoadRailer and still get the revenue for the Phoenix loads.  But mixed operation was not a goal of RoadRailer.  I had seen enough.  I became disillusioned.  Going to work became a chore instead of a challenge.  Larry Gross eventually fired me from RoadRailer.

 

Today there is a RoadRailer operation along the Pacific coast.  One train per week in each direction. It’s been at this low level of service for years. That’s well below the potential traffic level, but that’s all the traffic anybody’s been able to get using RoadRailer only consists.

 

  Think about it.  These trains are operated under contract for Swift Transportation, the largest truckload transportation company in the US.  The Southern Pacific initially operated them.  Then the UP took over the SP and the trains’ frequency was increased to twice per week in each direction.  Then the trains switched to a BNSF routing and were reduced to their current once per week schedule.

 

If the likes of Swift, SP, UP, and BNSF can’t get the traffic levels up to more than one train per week in each direction, things aren’t working very well, are they?

 

What does this mean for the future of RoadRailer?  One thing is for certain; things have to change.  RoadRailer can have a place in the North American transportation mix, but until the powers that be understand what that place is, we’re going to see more shut downs such as the Ice Cold Express and more insignificant operations such as the once a week trains between Portland and Los Angeles.

 

RoadRailers can function perfectly well as profitable adjuncts to the railway freight network in North America, but they cannot be used in isolation from other equipment moving on that network. 

 

The goal, as originally set by Mr. Reebie, should always have been to integrate RoadRailer technology into the existing railway network.  Instead, he mistakenly sought to segregate it from that network.  His basis for this segregation was his perception that existing rail intermodal service was not service competitive with trucking.  Even if he had been right, which he wasn’t, there was a fatal flaw in his thinking.

 

You don’t solve service problems with equipment.

 

If the railway service was poor, it could only be fixed though professional, disciplined operations.  It could never ever be fixed by substituting one equipment type, a RoadRailer, for another type of equipment, a TOFC trailer.

 

A railroad can give excellent service with TOFC trailers, containers, RoadRailers or even boxcars.   A railroad can also give poor service with trailers, containers, RoadRailers or boxcars.  Service quality basically has nothing to do with equipment type. Equating equipment type with service quality has been RoadRailer’s Achilles heel for over 25 years.  It’s time for somebody to start thinking.  In freight railroading, equipment type has nothing to do with service quality.  An operating department could even offer high quality service using containers loaded on friction bearing flatcars pulled by steam locomotives. 

 

            The New York Central did exactly that in the 1920’s when it established the first intermodal container service in the US; a service that was basically eventually shut down by Federal economic regulation because it ruffled too many influential political feathers. But it was a service that had been established to meet motor carrier competition.  It wassuccessfully meeting that competition, which is exactly why the politicians had to shut it down despite the fact that it was being operated with friction bearing flatcars and steam locomotives.

 

Once again, equipment type has absolutely nothing to do with service quality. So does RoadRailer have a future despite its history of limited success and multiple failures?

 

            I think so.  But Bob Reebie’s mistaken vision of a pristine, high quality, nationwide RoadRailer network operating in splendid isolation from other intermodal traffic has to be scrapped and scrapped soon.  It’s impossible to aggregate freight into economical train sizes using this business model. 

 

            One reasonable definition of insanity is doing the same exact thing over and overand expecting a different result.  How many more times will RoadRailer operations be shut down before someone comes to their senses?

 

            Just what markets could RoadRailer technology efficiently serve as part of an integrated rail intermodal system?

 

Here just one example of where they would work well on the BNSF.

 

  This railroad has two well-maintained, greatly underutilized lines running across western Nebraska and Kansas.  These lines serve an area I call the “Beef Mine”.   Per capita beef consumption in the US is 69 pounds per year.  This results in the slaughter of about 37 million head of cattle per year.  Increasingly, over the past few years, this slaughter has concentrated in a relatively few large facilities located on or near underutilized BNSF lines in Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.  The railroad doesn’t haul any of the hundreds of loads fresh meat produced at these facilities daily and shipped long distances to east and west coast population centers.

 

This is tailor made for RoadRailer.  The railroad could pick up 10 – 20 loads per day from each beef plant by adding them to the end of an existing train.  No large capital investment for traditional TOFC/COFC lift terminals would be required.  No expensive drayage to a TOFC terminal would be required.  The road – rail transfer could take place right at the beef facility and the trailers picked up as a normal block.  Just haul the freight and send ‘em a bill.  That’s what the railroad is for.

 

There are several other such opportunities involving other commodities.  Example are lumber from sawmills, paper from paper mills and Washington State apples. Washington is to apples as Nebraska and Kansas are to beef.  Production is centered there. There are, on average, 14 loads of Washington apples shipped per day by truck to the Los Angeles area alone.  Here are the USDA statistics for apple shipments from Washington

 

State for the week of August 18-24, 2002:

 

Mode	Tons	Equivalent	Market
		Truckloads	Share
Railcar	270	13	1.3%
TOFC	250	12	1.2%
Motor freight	20,715	986	97.6%
Total	21,235	1,011	100.0%

Note: equivalent truckloads are figured at 21 tons lading per truck.

 

This is basically pathetic.  The railroads only have a 2.5% market share of this large volume, good paying[v], long haul market – it’s a thousand loads per week for cripe sakes! (As an example, the loads to LA pay a $1.25 per truckload mile for a 1,000-mile+ haul. Any transportation professional who can’t put money on his company’s bottom line at this rate and distance should find another profession.)

 

  RoadRailers could get this market for the BNSF, the same way they could get the “Beef Mine” traffic, but they’re not being used that way.  They’re still being used as Reebie’s vision intended, a vision that has been proven wrong time and time again without being rethought.

 

The traffic is there, the equipment is there, and the trains are there.  All that is required is for someone to figure out that this is where RoadRailers fit.  It’s not a problem with the technology; it’s a problem with people knowing how to use the technology.

 

Bob Reebie got it wrong in 1980.  He sought to segregate RoadRailer operations from the North American rail network.  He should have sought to integrate RoadRailers into that network.  His unfortunate thoughtless legacy continues with the demise of the Ice Cold Express.

 

Unless and until some people in power start to think and come to understand the potential and proper uses of RoadRailers this promising technology seems destined to be little more than an interesting part of railroad history.  Kind of like a narrow gauge gondola.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Until the late 1970s, rail rates on produce were regulated and held constant by the Interstate Commerce Commission.  Motor freight rates on produce were never regulated.  This meant the motor rates could move with market demand.  Produce is seasonal, with peak shipments in the summer.  In response, the truckers charged more in the summer and less in the winter, when demand was less.  This is the principal of supply and demand as taught in Economics 101.

 

The railroads couldn’t do this because of the Federal Regulations.  This meant the railroads had to sell transportation at below market rates in the summer when demand was high.  It also meant that their equipment sat idle in the winter when the truckers would undercut the rail rates as necessary.  The railroads couldn’t make money:  1) selling below market price during peak demand season, or 2) having equipment sit idle during slack demand.  They got out of the business.

 

The almost 100% shift of long haul California produce from rail to truck was not due to any real advantage the truckers have for this long haul business.  It was overwhelmingly due to misguided Federal economic regulation.

 

 

[ii] According to the August, 2002 “Railway Age”, the railroad retained only 2% to 8% of this business “depending on the season and the availability of competing modes.”

 

 

[iii] The Canadian National is now operating commercial RoadRailer service between Montreal and Toronto, a distance of 335 miles.  Intermodal can compete at that distance if there is enough freight available.

 

 

[iv]“American Narrow Gauge Railroads”, p 240.

 

 

[v] For the week of August 18-24, 2002 the USDA reported that the average truckload charge for moving a load of apples from the Yakima Valley to Los Angeles was $1,300 for about 1,037 miles of transportation.  This is $1.25 per mile.

[ricktrains4824]

I have thought this for a while, that the whole problem is that they don't run Roadrailers WITH other intermodal equipment. 

Why, could you not, build the train with regular TOFC/COFC/Well cars, THEN the fancy couplermate adapter car, with the Roadrailers last? Amtrak can do it, why don't the freight carriers catch on?

But, if the upper level guys and girls at Roadrailer dislike the idea...... That would explain things.

Someone who has the guts to pull off the disliked "mixed train" with Roadrailers in the mix could stand to make lots of money, and set the standard for all of the others to try to reach.

 

[dakotafred]

Greyhounds:

Re. produce: If rail rates were held below market in the summertime, shouldn't this have worked to the rails' advantage? (The opposite of the winter situation.)

And didn't service problems on the Penn Central play a role in loss of this time-sensitive traffic? I don't remember from my reading when the erosion started, except I believe it was also coincident with the filling in of the Interstate highway system.

(Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the ICC for a minute.) 

[Vern Moore]

The demise of RoadRailer mirrors the demise of its primary customer: auto assembly outside of the one day drive from Detroit market.  As the Big Three have retrenched their operations to around Detroit (with a few exceptions), RoadRailer has seen its customer base shrinking.

 

At the same time "conventional" intermodal, COFC and double stacks have grown steadily between all the same points RoadRailer serves.  And the demise of the produce express RoadRailer service also parallels the growth of new refrigerated container service.

Coupled with the aging of current RoadRailer equipment and the fact that a regular container can be loaded heavier than a RoadRailer trailer, shippers are being enticed to switch service to containerized intermodal. The railroads don't have to buy new RoadRailer equipment and shippers get to ship heavier loads at the same or lower prices.

It's the same logic that is seeing major trucking companies like JB Hunt, Schneider and Swift switching to containers and letting railroads perform the long haul instead of investing in new trailers and over the road tractors.

The trucking company division I drove for lost a major contract to our own intermodal division because the costs for one truckload of laundry detergent to be driven from Ohio to the west coast would pay for ten containers to be shipped from North Baltimore to the west coast.

Both long-haul trucking and RoadRailer are at cost disadvantages to conventional intermodal and as the railroads and shippers work to squeeze even more costs out of the equation it will become impossible to compete against containerized freight.

[greyhounds]

dakotafred

Greyhounds: Re. produce: If rail rates were held below market in the summertime, shouldn't this have worked to the rails' advantage? (The opposite of the winter situation.) And didn't service problems on the Penn Central play a role in loss of this time-sensitive traffic? I don't remember from my reading when the erosion started, except I believe it was also coincident with the filling in of the Interstate highway system. (Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the ICC for a minute.) 

Well, no.

If the railroads could sell a load for $5,000 and the government only let them charge $4,000 they weren't being "helped".  They were being hurt.

The Union Pacific Historical Society's publication "The Streamliner" had a good two part series on UP's last efforts to retain the California perishables in their Spring and Summer issues of 2012.  The writer was Rob Leachman who was with UP management when this happened.  He's now a PhD on the faculty at UC Berkley.

I'm going from memory here, but Leachman doesn't put the blame on PC service problems.  He cites the holding down of rates by the ICC as causing the originating carrier, the SP, to loose interest in providing the required service levels.  The SP's reasoning was that they weren't allowed to make any money on this business so why bust their butt to provide the service.  

The Interstate System certainly made long haul trucking more competitive will all rail movement.  But at the distances involved, 2,000 to 3,000 miles, the rails should have retained a significant cost advantage for this business.  They could provide the service needed.  It's just that the freaking ICC removed much, if not all, incentive for them to provide that service.

[Paul of Covington]

   Why have the Roadrailer people been so adamant about keeping their equipment in dedicated trains?   The only reason I can think of is that the slack action at the end of a train might be too violent for their trailers.

[dakotafred]

Thanks for the above, Greyhounds. I forgot about the vital S.P. component.

I worked for U.P. in Cheyenne, 1966-72, and will never forget the warm-weather parade of solid perishable trains, the "Green Fruits." I was properly impressed with the volume of business ... but had no baseline to compare it with. (Never considered it might have been even more at one time.)

[CGW]

Anyone have an idea what will happen to the Minneapolis Triple Crown freight?  Will there be a conventional intermodal terminal built or will the containers be trucked to Chicago?

Jeff

[MP173]

Wow...lots of good stuff to chew on here.  Thanks Greyhound for that discussion on ICG, Roadrailers, and the economics of intermodal transporation.  Reebie sounds like a job I would have enjoyed back in the day, as I was trying to fil LTL trailers in the 1980s before I moved on to a much more enjoyable and lucrative career.

Today, I fill my "traffic" needs by watching the NS run it's intermodal (and general freights) thru Chesterton, In on the webcam and webscanner.  My evolution has been from simply watching an NS train to identifying the NS trains and monitoring their performance (timing) to now trying to understand WHY NS is running these trains (both intermodal and general freight).

The intermodal puzzle is interesting and can be pieced together with a little work. By integrating the trains I see (and hear) passing Chesterton with NS's intermodal schedule one can piece together pretty good understanding of their operations.

For instance...Harrisburg, Pa and Columbus, Oh feature big intermodal trains in the late afternoon, often running within a few minutes of each other (3-4pm)...26N and 26T.  These are heavy domestic (and some international) double stacks that come off the BNSF in Chicago and feature heavy JBHunt trailers...often over 100 cans per train are JBH.  These trains often exceed 250 containers total.  HUGE movements of product to Columbus and Harrisburg.

Why to these two cities?  I can only guess these are major distribution centers for the New York - Washington and the Ohio regions. JBH has established these two locations as core terminals (obviously).

Surprizingly, the Chicago - Detroit pass thru intermodal train handles no JBH nor have I ever seen a domestic can on the 20N (noon -2pm).  It is extremely short, usually 70 cans with 1 motor.  Nor are the EMP or Hub cans on this train.

So, BNSF (and possibly UP) can solicit thru the intermodal retailers domestic business for Harrisburg and Columbus but not Detroit....Why?  Yet NS runs a Chicago to Toledo intermodal (train 24N) which I have never seen but allegedly handles UPS.  Why does this train run such a short distance.  One night I will stay up and watch it...it probably has considerable JBH (which would serve Detroit)...but that is only a guess.

Meanwhile, the UPS trains are another story.  Do not delay the "mail trains".  Take a look at 24M some morning around 630am.  This is a Chicago - Baltimore TOFC single stacker which usually has 50 -90 trailers and containers.  UPS often has 50% of the business, but tucked midway into the train is a block of international cans, then more UPS containers and trailers at the rear.  Why?  A peak at the NS intermodal schedule notes that 24M handles Pittsburgh TOFC in addition to the Baltimore traffic.  Thus, there are not 30-50 UPS loads going to Baltimore (and Washington DC), but probably half of those are dropped in Pittsburgh.  I dont know whether it is the front block or rear, but it makes sense.

The Croxton trains are another interesting operation.  There are stacks, but these trains often are a majority of refer units with a healthy load of LTL pup trailers, and freight forwarder (Clipper, Alliance, etc).  Why?  Not sure, but my guess is the refers are carrying meat and produce to the NYC/New Jersey area for distribution rather than the Harrisburg area.  The terminals for those operations are necessarily close to the consumers.

But wait, there is more (much more).  Watch the 24W in late afternoon and you will find quite a mixture.  This train appears to come off of the BNSF and is bound for Harrisburg again...but it has International cans, JBH, and UPS!  Thus, UPS is running thru Chicago to the east coast, probably from Kansas City, or possibly the west coast.  Walmart and other retailers even get in the act on this train around November and December.

I think NS has a pretty good intermodal network set up, primarily based on the alliance with JBH and BNSF and also with the refer community and UPS.  Interestingly, there are very few UPS loads on the Croxton trains...these seem to go via CSX (their HOT HOT HOT Q010).  Both 20E (NS) and Q010 provide TOFC service from Chicago to New Jersey with both trains departing Chicago around 6am daily.  Both are very healthy trains with TOFC loads well over 100 and often 150 or more.

Details, details.  You gotta know the market if you haul freight for a living.

My guess is the Roadrailer just doesnt work and can be worked into the NS system.  There is plenty of auto parts moving between KC and Detroit area, thus providing the service...for now.

Ed

[Paul Milenkovic]

Not sure if I agree with the premise that service is completely separated from technology.

One of the features of the Chicago commuter trains is that their entry into the Loop parallels major freeways.  The commuter train riders are just "flying" during those last miles into the city because their trains have their own right-of-ways, and furthermore, they make only limited stops within Chicago city limits as that traffic is for the CTA El and subway trains.  The Expressway traffic, on the other hand, is just clogged.

I was on such a train with a passenger train advocate offering, "Look at those poor souls in their cars!"  The idea that you are a train zipping along, looking out among motorists on a road turned parking lot is not an original concept either.  But on the way inbound (we came from Wisconsin, got on at Harvard, Il., and made every stop along the way), my associate was pointing out how the boarding passengers had been "trained" (excuse the pun) to form queues on the platform for where the boarding doors were expected to line up at that stop.

So the motorists were in a queue on the JFK Expressway to gain access to the Ohio Street off ramp, but the Metra riders formed queues where they had to wait for the train to arrive and for them to board it.  The queues were just in different times and places in the journey to the Loop.

Back to RoadRailer.  Intermodal is a form of freight aggregation, but every form of railroad freight is some form of aggregation, and each offers various pros and cons. 

What RoadRailer is supposed to do is greatly reduce the tare weight and aerodynamic drag of and hence fuel and capital costs of truck trailers aggregated into trains.  There is some tare weight penalty in the road mode, but maybe not as much in Gen II RoadRailers that ride on 2-axle trucks supplied during their assembly into a train as opposed to Gen I that had single guided rail axles on the truck trailer.  But even though there is a tare weight penalty for the trailer to take the buff and draft forces of a train, it is not nearly enough to take the buff and draft of a conventional train, general freight, intermodal, or passenger. 

Hence RoadRailer has to run as "unit" consists at the tail ends of such trains or run as its own train.  And this need to run its own trains is a "bug not a feature" to free it from the comings and goings of other intermodal trains not to even contemplate a general merchandise freight that gets broken up and reformed in yards.

What RoadRailer is also supposed to do is reduce the capital costs for the intermodal terminal.  You don't need gantry cranes or Piggy Packer loaders -- I believe you just need specialized truck tractors to assemble the truck vans into trains, similar to the "circus loading" Clejan piggyback system.  So you are stuck with not only the aggregation of loads into trains, you are stuck with something akin to circus loading of flatcars, restricting you to trains run between city pairs without intermediate stops.  This is much like the Amtrak AutoTrain service, which has helped restrict it to just one city-pair market.

And as mentioned above, isolated city pairs that are not stops on a larger network simply don't generate enough trailer loads to aggregate into frequent enough train service.  So it is not a question of service being a matter of corporate will, the RoadRailer technology simply does not "do" anything where loads are added and removed at intermediate stops, and perhaps make connections to other trains at those stops.  You cannot stop at an intermediate intermodal terminal and pull a trailer out of the consist with a "lift", or maybe you could, but you would start banging up the remaining RoadRailers in the consist to recouple them, and at that point, you may as well revert to boxcars that get smashed around gravity hump yards (Shock Control Service!).

So I still think that Intermodal is about the right technology to perform the necessary aggregation without smashing up the lading and taking forever to get there, and RoadRailer isn't quite "it."

John Kneiling, however, thought that the Stedman side-transfer of containers between specialized truck trailers with "the gear" and single-level container flat cars was "the magic bullet."  You were restricted to containers, and you could not double-stack them, but stackable containers take a tare weight penalty and how much do double stacks gain on siding train-length limitations -- there are mighty big gaps between the containers on double stacks, which must also exact an air drag and hence fuel penalty.

If you were willing to go container instead of piggyback trailer, if you were willing to live without double stack, you had this low capital cost way for one-person random-access transfer of a container by dragging it on guides rather than lifting it.  Your "intermodal terminal" was simply a concrete strip paralleling a raiload siding big enough to take the intermodal train when it made a stop, and you loaded and unloaded containers like passengers boarding or disembarking from a passenger train at an intermediate stop.

What was there not to like about that system?  Was it Canadian and hence not invented here?  Was it not double stack, but then piggyback intermodal isn't either?  Did it take inordinate amount of skill from the truck driver/transfer operator to work?  Did it have a long "cycle time" that would tie up the intermodal train?  What gives that we never hear that it even existed (in Canada)?

[rrnut282]

Paul,

Do you know that Triple Crown operates a yard in Fort Wayne where trailers are switched from one train to another?  Triple Crown routes are like an *.  So, unlike your Autotrain comparison, Roadrailers can and do pick/up and drop-off enroute.  (as a sidenote: autotrain could make enroute stops by loading rack cars at each stop and just adding them to the end of the train.)   

With the latest generation of trailers, it could be done just about anywhere a forklift can get beside the tracks, so individual shippers along the route could have loaded and "lifted" their trailers on their siding.  However, no one ever operated them like this to my knowledge.  It would have required too much coordination between the customer's forklift operator and the train crew to make the lawyers comfortable. 

[Paul Milenkovic]

The whole point of intermodal, and I suppose Autotrain by extension, is that you don't send a cut of express autoracks loaded with Grandpa Henry's GMC Yukon careening down a hump yard.

So Triple Crown can "switch" trailers in a RoadRailer consist using "lifts"?  You need something a little bit more robust, by the way, than a generic factory forklift.  The Piggypacker was inspired by log loaders, but it is a fairly heavy, expensive machine that limits its use to high-volume terminals.

So you lift a trailer out of a RoadRailer consist -- how to do couple it back together into a train without damaging stuff?  When you assemble a RoadRailer consist, you are using a truck tractor to gently back each trailer, one at a time, into a train, and that process akin to "circus style" piggyback contributes to its inflexibility.  What do you do when you have a whole string of trailers that you need to couple to another string? 

Besides the intermodal aspect, that you don't need to unload deliveries from trucks and then load boxcars, the intermodal concept at least is supposed to eliminated both flat switching and hump yards as a way of shipments making connections between trains on the railroad network.   Lifting, I am told, is much more gentle on cargo than switching.

The Stedman side transfer system (hydraulically dragging a container between a truck trailer and a spine car with container guides) was claimed to be as gentle as lifting.  Dumpster is a similar dragging transfer system, but Stedman didn't require tipping the container as done in the Dumpster system.

Low capital cost, random access, OK, OK, alright already, didn't support stacking, but double stacks introduce a whole lot of other problems of container tare weight and train fuel consumption for what is probably marginal overall benefit of a few more boxes per siding-length constrained train.  So the Stedman system, what was there not to love?

[avonlea22]

This story confuses me a bit as NS/Triple Crown have just completed a huge new Roadrailer yard in Harrisburg, PA. Seems illogical to plan and build this yard just to get rid of it.  I just saw my first Roadrailer train ever in person about a month ago. I didn't know they still existed. Shortly after I saw the new yard in Harrisburg.  Poor planning or the story doesn't cover everything.  I guess we will see.

[carnej1]

Paul Milenkovic

The whole point of intermodal, and I suppose Autotrain by extension, is that you don't send a cut of express autoracks loaded with Grandpa Henry's GMC Yukon careening down a hump yard.

So Triple Crown can "switch" trailers in a RoadRailer consist using "lifts"?  You need something a little bit more robust, by the way, than a generic factory forklift.  The Piggypacker was inspired by log loaders, but it is a fairly heavy, expensive machine that limits its use to high-volume terminals.

So you lift a trailer out of a RoadRailer consist -- how to do couple it back together into a train without damaging stuff?  When you assemble a RoadRailer consist, you are using a truck tractor to gently back each trailer, one at a time, into a train, and that process akin to "circus style" piggyback contributes to its inflexibility.  What do you do when you have a whole string of trailers that you need to couple to another string? 

Besides the intermodal aspect, that you don't need to unload deliveries from trucks and then load boxcars, the intermodal concept at least is supposed to eliminated both flat switching and hump yards as a way of shipments making connections between trains on the railroad network.   Lifting, I am told, is much more gentle on cargo than switching.

The Stedman side transfer system (hydraulically dragging a container between a truck trailer and a spine car with container guides) was claimed to be as gentle as lifting.  Dumpster is a similar dragging transfer system, but Stedman didn't require tipping the container as done in the Dumpster system.

Low capital cost, random access, OK, OK, alright already, didn't support stacking, but double stacks introduce a whole lot of other problems of container tare weight and train fuel consumption for what is probably marginal overall benefit of a few more boxes per siding-length constrained train.  So the Stedman system, what was there not to love?

 

 I highly recommend David J. BeBoer's book "Piggyback and Containers" for those interested in the evolution of intermodal operations and equipment. The author is an industry insider and there is a great deal of coverage of various ideas that were tried out and why they were adopted (or not) by the industry.

 The concept of single stacked, unreinforced containers for domestic service is an interesting one, does anyone know what the tare weight would be compared to the current standard boxes? Given that the COFC side of the industry started by moving ISO boxes, which must be stackable, and given that international containers are still a major part of the traffic flow, that probaly explains why nobody has serioulsy looked at the idea. I guess an exception might be the NYC Flexi vans, which were designed to be loaded unloaded without stackers or cranes.

 A similiar concept is the Stedman equipment is being promoted in Europe, it includes a side loading system:

http://www.innovatrain.ch/en/

As far as the contentions about well cars, I would be interested to hear from other posters who work in the industry but I thought that the dominance of doublestacking over other intermodal systems in North America was primarily because the lower tare weight per weight of freight moved offered significant fuel savings.

 I am under the impression that this has been prooven empirically and a lot of study led to it becoming the industry standard....

 

[PNWRMNM]

carnej1

As far as the contentions about well cars, I would be interested to hear from other posters who work in the industry but I thought that the dominance of doublestacking over other intermodal systems in North America was primarily because the lower tare weight per weight of freight moved offered significant fuel savings.

Double stack offers two significant advantages as compared to the 89' flat car which was the standard when SP introduced double stack technology. Reduced fuel cost is one, greater capacity per train, given a length limit, is the other.

My personal opinion is that the latter is probably what drove SP. SP served the Port of Los Angeles and traffic to and from the port moved predominately over the Sunset Route and the SSW. Both of these routes were single track with passing tracks of about 8,000 feet. Net of power and caboose that left 7, 500 feet and it was desirable to enter the siding at 20-30 MPH, which means there has to be running room at the end to avoid having to creep up to the far end of the siding. Lets assume our target train length is 6,000 feet of cars. At 95 feet over the pulling faces, that is 63 cars or 126 containers for the default equipment of the day. In comparison, double stacks in five pack configuration for 40' containers were about 250 feet long. 24 cars with a capacity of 240 containers will fit in that same 6,000 feet.

Holding revenue per container constant, revenue per train mile is doubled. The railroad can handle a given traffic with half as many train starts, or has doubled its capacity per unit of time at a stroke.

Train delay for meets and passes is said by those who know to increase as the square of the number of trains per day. That means 20 TPD will experience 400 units of delay, whicle 25 will experience 625 units, both per crew district. Those units of delay cost money. These capacity improvements were a big deal to the single track SP. If a route is entirely two main tracks or double track, then the line haul capacity gain is less significant and fuel savings would be relatively more important.

The capacity per length of track becomes important again and always in the terminals. If single stack trains have half the capacity, then have to turn over tracks twice as fast for any given throughput. I would expect the single stack terminal to gridlock before the double stack. Again we have superior track productivity with the double stack and in a situation where physical expansion is frightfully expensive.

Mac McCulloch     

[OWTX]

tl;dr version:

Tare weight is an input variable. When you solve for it, the resultant rail vehicle is problematic. See: GM's Aerotrain.

I would also caution against HSR proponents insistence that removing weight via the FRA buffer requirements will make the numbers work.

[Jim611]

There was enough business for TCS to sustain a fluid business.  I live in Fort Wayne, and it would be unusual to see a train with less then 100 trailers.  In listening to the scanner at night, alot of the trains maxed out at 150 trailers, sometimes more as I would hear the TCS dispatcher advising there would be some OTR trailers  There was a lot of traffic from/to Fort Wayne as you would see Triple Crown trailers being pulled aound town all the time.

I believe what ended it was that NS did not want to invest in new equipment. I heard they had a lot of 3PL business, which would be priced wholesale.  NS probably did not want TCS going after its customers business.  Oh well, it provided a lot of good train watching while it lasted.

[diningcar]

Perhaps of interest here: today, October 3 at 10:00 AM, I witnessed a complete NS Roadailer train including NS power EASTBOUND at Emporia, KS on the BNSF transcon.  

I did not count the loads because I was caught by surprise but I would guess more than fifty.

[zugmann]

avonlea22

This story confuses me a bit as NS/Triple Crown have just completed a huge new Roadrailer yard in Harrisburg, PA. Seems illogical to plan and build this yard just to get rid of it.  I just saw my first Roadrailer train ever in person about a month ago. I didn't know they still existed. Shortly after I saw the new yard in Harrisburg.  Poor planning or the story doesn't cover everything.  I guess we will see.

 

That yard is for conventional intermodal, not roadrailers.  And I think the plan is to eventually expand the intermnodal yard into the space currently occupied by Triple Crown (but don't quote me on that).

[cat992c]

Good for the Wabash Line between Fort Wayne & Decatur

[avonlea22]

zugmann

 

 

That yard is for conventional intermodal, not roadrailers.  And I think the plan is to eventually expand the intermnodal yard into the space currently occupied by Triple Crown (but don't quote me on that).

 

 

Ah, ok. I've seen it filled with roadrailers so assumed it was for them. Thanks.

[Paul Milenkovic]

I believe I have read the DeBoer book as it is in the collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.  There is discussion of how the PiggyPacker was inspired by a type of forklift-style log loader.  The account of Super C is interesting (should we call it "A Land-Bridge too Far"?) along with a snarky view of a "tandem crew" operation of trucks over that distance to compete with it on speed (described as a concept that works "if you are willing to kill people" in highway accidents, presumably from driver fatigue).

I think it talks about Flexi-Van and attempts to interline for a coast-to-coast service, but not much discussion of "how it works" along with the "cycle times" for loading and unloading the containers.  I don't remember much of anything said of Stedman side-transfer: given that I grew up on The Professional Iconoclast, I would remember anything substantive said pro or con.

On the subject of double stacks, yes, you pack more containers into a siding, but I am far from convinced you get anything like twice as much.  Whenever I see double stacks in real life along where Highway 41 parallels the CN north of Oshkosh, WI or in photos, there are big gaps between the containers owing to the linear distance taken up by the two-axle trucks at the articulated junctions, even bigger gaps at the ends of the articulated sets.

Given the height and gaps between containers in the double stack, I fail to see how this doesn't use a lot more fuel than single-level containers.  This is owing to really ragged aerodynamics at intermodal speeds.  That is, unless double stacks are run at substantially below normal truck speeds.  As to tare weight, the double stack might be weight saving over the old 89' piggyback/container flatcars that were quite heavy, but to they save that much weight over modern articulated spine cars?

The side-transfer system in Europe that is linked is intriguing -- I will have to study this more.

[oltmannd]

avonlea22

 

 

zugmann

 

 

That yard is for conventional intermodal, not roadrailers.  And I think the plan is to eventually expand the intermnodal yard into the space currently occupied by Triple Crown (but don't quote me on that).

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, ok. I've seen it filled with roadrailers so assumed it was for them. Thanks.

 

The intermodal terminal is on the west end of Rutherford yard.  The Triple Crown terminal is on the east end.

[chutton01]

Paul Milenkovic

Given the height and gaps between containers in the double stack, I fail to see how this doesn't use a lot more fuel than single-level containers.  This is owing to really ragged aerodynamics at intermodal speeds.  That is, unless double stacks are run at substantially below normal truck speeds.

Well, Union Pacific sort of thought the way you did:

Positioned on top of the first freight container, the 48-foot Arrowedge® has a tapered body that allows air to more easily flow around the train's top frontmost containers. This reduces aerodynamic drag for more efficient transport of customers' goods. In addition, drag reductions decrease the amount of locomotive power required to propel the train, UP says,

UP Arrowedge (ETA - I give up - nothing is letting me hot link to it. I'm afraid you'll need to search for UP Arrowedge yourself)

It doesn't always go well.

[greyhounds]

Paul Milenkovic

On the subject of double stacks, yes, you pack more containers into a siding, but I am far from convinced you get anything like twice as much.  Whenever I see double stacks in real life along where Highway 41 parallels the CN north of Oshkosh, WI or in photos, there are big gaps between the containers owing to the linear distance taken up by the two-axle trucks at the articulated junctions, even bigger gaps at the ends of the articulated sets.

 

Double Stack won the contest a couple decades ago.  For very good reasons.  This is a comparison of a Trinity built five platform spine car and a Gunderson built three well double stack car.  It isn't even a close contest. For current intermodal operations double stack is clearly the most efficient car type.  (I hope this comes through in good format.)

	For a Single Intermodal Car
	car		car	car		length per		tare weight
	length		weight	container		container		per container
	in feet		in tons	capacity		in feet		in tons
spine car	290.63		88	5		58.13		17.50
well car	203.81		63	6		33.97		10.42
	For a 240 Container Train
	train		train	train		length per		tare weight
	length		weight	container		container		per container
	in feet		in tons	capacity		in feet		in tons
spine car	13,950.00		4,200	240		58.13		17.50
well car	8,152.50		2,500	240		33.97		10.42
	Spine car disdvantage
	For a 240 Container Train
	train		train	train		length per		tare weight
	length		weight	container		container		per container
	in feet		in tons	capacity		in feet		in tons
	5,797.50		1,700	0.0		24.16		7.08
	71.1%		68.0%	0.0%		71.1%		68.0%

The spine car train would be over a mile longer and have a tare weight of 1,700 tons more.  That would require an extra locomotive to make IM speeds.  (That's wasted money big time.)

The terminals are a critical factor.  Track space in a terminal is precious.  And the fact that the DS cars can put more containers through a terminal on less track space is mondo important.  

Please study the cost structures of railroads.  Those extra revenue loads are flat out golden.  Areodynamics counts, but it's only one (of the smaller) factors in the cost equation.