I noticed for the last year that year to date intermodal traffic reports have noted part of the soft market of said traffic was due to the cancellation of the NS Roadrailers. I thought that traffic was supposed to be absorbed into container traffic which means it should not have disappeared (just be listed under a different catagory). Was the business retained or not?
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/250373.aspx
[If somebody can make the above link "live", please do; the forum software won't save my changes!]
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
CSX_road_slug http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/250373.aspx [If somebody can make the above link "live", please do; the forum software won't save my changes!]
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Hyperlink not working.
One more try It failed, so just cut and paste.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
I can not get the link to work either. Like Schlimm said, just copy and paste.
An "expensive model collector"
Tried about 6 or 7 times with the [url] tags and it finally worked. This software...
Original Poster I thought that traffic was supposed to be absorbed into container traffic which means it should not have disappeared
FWIW, I thought the above was the true nature of the original poster's question, and not "why didn't roadrailer succeed?" which is what the linked-to information covers
Perhaps once independant truckers gained control of the loads, they were less than enthusiastic about turning them over to the nearest railroad?
Might that be one benefit (to the host railroads) of the roadrailer business model that we have overlooked in previous discussion?
My boss was looking for some cheap trailers to replace some of our oldest ones in the fleet last year. We needed some ones for storage and to move short hauls in the area. We looked at some of the old Triple Crowns for about 20 seconds before eliminating them from contention. Why did we eliminate them from our consideration. Tare weight is 1500 lbs heavier than your standard 53 footer meaning we loose 1 pallet of freight of goods per load. Second they are beat to hell and we saw top and bottom rails that needed to be replaced. Last one and this is the big one is they were 20 years old.
Why did Roadrailer traffic fail my boss said it this way. Why pay 300 bucks in Drayage fees plus the rail rate for a load to move 700 miles for a total of about 900 bucks when a trucking company will do it all door to door for just over a grand and be there 1 day faster.
Dixie Flyer I noticed for the last year that year to date intermodal traffic reports have noted part of the soft market of said traffic was due to the cancellation of the NS Roadrailers. I thought that traffic was supposed to be absorbed into container traffic which means it should not have disappeared (just be listed under a different catagory). Was the business retained or not?
Mostly not. Roadrailer lanes didn't overlay existing intermodal lanes very well. Not much traffic could be converted.
The equipment got old, the business wasn't throwing off enough cash to justify reinvestment in new boxes. Run the wheels off the existing equipment. Suck out as much cash as you can and quit. Game over.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Shadow the Cats ownerWhy pay 300 bucks in Drayage fees plus the rail rate for a load to move 700 miles for a total of about 900 bucks when a trucking company will do it all door to door for just over a grand and be there 1 day faster.
Is the carrying cost of the goods for one day > $100? If not, then intermodal saves you money.
Most of the time for IM freight including Roadrailers the time penetly is 2 days. Why is it 2 days. You first have to make sure that your trailer gets loaded early enough for your drayage driver to make the cut off time for the train for the city it is going to. Then you have to get to the railyard make it through the gate in time for the cut off and hope like heck you do. Around Chicago delays at the gate can be 2-3 hours and when a train leaves a IM yard at 12 PM that means if your cut off is at 9 am your trailer better be loaded and at the gate the Night before. Now when you get to the other end you have to recover the trailer get out of the IM yard deal with whatever traffic there is in that area then get to your customer to make your delivery.
Now my boss does use IM from time to time if say a load is going to CA as that is not in one of our normal service lanes. We will ship out a trailer and it takes about 2 days longer than if we would use one of our own drivers. We just about break even on the IM loads we ship out to CA. It is just my boss does not want to deal with the Hostliaty of the CA Dot towards our industry and would rather let people out there deal with the DOT officers out there.
Convicted One Perhaps once independant truckers gained control of the loads, they were less than enthusiastic about turning them over to the nearest railroad? Might that be one benefit (to the host railroads) of the roadrailer business model that we have overlooked in previous discussion?
Most of the "Independent Trucker Crowd" are a pretty savvy lot. There is freight they really quickly jump on...Freight that is easy to load/unload, and shippers and receivers that move on with dispatch. [ ie: The 'turn and burn stuff'. ]
Get a shipper and receiver that likes to abuse truckers, and the truckers learn pretty quickly where, and who they are. That kind of reputation spreads far and wide within the trucker community.
That kind of freight becomes something of a scarificial load; used only to get to a 'better area', or back to an area where the trucker really knows there are better loads.
The 'majors' in irregular route carriers; The JB Hunts, Schneiders, Swifts, Martens, Trans Americas. They usually have a very much higher ratio of trailers to tractors. They can afford to go to those problematic shippers and receiver locations; negotiate for a trailer dropping, and swapping out scheme. Their drivers can deliver, drop and hook trailers, and get on to their next load. ( That 'turn and burn') thing I had mentioned. Drivers tend to like those arrangements, a lot!
Those kinds of arrangements allow the receiver to schedule in their loads, and many will have 'lumpers' to load or unload the dropped trailers- the trucker adds that lumping cost to their costs for that shipper. It also eliminates a driver having to negotiate that cost with an independent lumper; That kind of cost can get out of hand pretty quickly.
Such large shipper and receiver locations like the "Big Box Store" warehouses and distribution centers, as well as auto parts plants, and manufacturers are places that have those arrangements in their operations.
AS to the Road Railer Ops.. it might be said that it had outlived its equipmeent and usefulness, and was not agile enough to re-adapt its paradigm for a new time?
samfp1943AS to the Road Railer Ops.. it might be said that it had outlived its equipmeent and usefulness, and was not agile enough to re-adapt its paradigm for a new time?
I appreciate everything that you just posted. Specific to the paragraph quoted above, however, I'd like to point out that one of the rationale volunteered by a widely revered member of this board against the roadrailer business model was that everything a roadrailer could do, containerized intermodal could do better.
Based upon the findings reported by the originator of this thread, much of the roadrailer business has not gone to containerized intermodal. Looks to me as though truckers have had measurable success in wrestling back the gains Triple Crown had made against them.
I guess it would be fair to summarize, that previously once the freight was loaded onto a Triple Crown trailer, the railroad pretty much owned the haul that followed.
Convicted OneBased upon the findings reported by the originator of this thread, much of the roadrailer business has not gone to containerized intermodal. Looks to me as though truckers have had measurable success in wrestling back the gains Triple Crown had made against them.
And a lot of other business seems to have been ceded to truckers. It's what you get as a "wholesaler" of transportation. The "retailer" captures both retail & wholesale and uses you as a sub-contractor on a limited number of routes.
schlimm Convicted One Based upon the findings reported by the originator of this thread, much of the roadrailer business has not gone to containerized intermodal. Looks to me as though truckers have had measurable success in wrestling back the gains Triple Crown had made against them. And a lot of other business seems to have been ceded to truckers. It's what you get as a "wholesaler" of transportation. The "retailer" captures both retail & wholesale and uses you as a sub-contractor on a limited number of routes.
Convicted One Based upon the findings reported by the originator of this thread, much of the roadrailer business has not gone to containerized intermodal. Looks to me as though truckers have had measurable success in wrestling back the gains Triple Crown had made against them.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
schlimmAnd a lot of other business seems to have been ceded to truckers. It's what you get as a "wholesaler" of transportation. The "retailer" captures both retail & wholesale and uses you as a sub-contractor on a limited number of routes.
No, I don't think that's accurate.
Wholesaler/retailer doesn't matter. Absent government intervention (Ich, Yetch, Terrible), the freight movement will be by the most efficient method. If that method involves a rail haul the freight will have a rail haul. It won't matter if the railroad company is wholesaling or retailing. Likewise, if the most efficient method doesn't involve a rail haul, the freight will move over the road whether the railroad is retailing or not.
Of course, government intervention has lingering ill effects. The government drove long haul temperature contolled movements to the highway. This eliminated the railroads' expertise in handling such shipments. Getting that knowledge back is quite a struggle.
greyhounds The government drove long haul temperature contolled movements to the highway. This eliminated the railroads' expertise in handling such shipments. Getting that knowledge back is quite a struggle.
The government drove long haul temperature contolled movements to the highway. This eliminated the railroads' expertise in handling such shipments. Getting that knowledge back is quite a struggle.
Greyhounds
Is this a result of government meddling specifically in temperature-controlled shipments or the result of the general government meddling that you have written about in the past?
Thanks
Anthony V.
greyhounds even with all the new regulations that my boss has had thrown upon him in the last 16 years having to deal with the Post 9/11 security issues for clearing his drivers to haul haz mat and the resulting Insurance crisis that followed as the requirements for hauling it went from a minimum of 1.5 million to now a 7.5 millon overnight for liabilty concerns. Then throw in 5 rewrites of our HOS regulations 3 changes to our Drug and Alcohal testing requirements multiple other regulations that have been forced down our throats including the SAFER metric and now E logs. Plus for fun throw in the proposed Speed Limiter a tripiling of our fuel prices all the EPA Emisison changes his traffic levels on a normal year have grown at 5% year after year for the last 15 years.
Our customers except for 2 they all have the option of using rail as their other shipping option. Why do they prefer OTR trucking it is NOT pricing we have always been the higher priced method even since the ICC regulated days on a tonnage basis. It has always been the Service that the OTR industry sells that has one over customers in most areas. We are not a produce hauling carrier at all but why should a customer that had rail access have to wait 5 days for a load of lettuce to come across the nation in a railcar in a train even on a dedicated train when 2 drivers running as a team can get it there in 2.5 days. In produce speed is time on the shelf for the stores. Now we offer a special service for our customers we buy hopper cars full of plastic pellets blend them to their needs and then ship them to their factories to be molded into products. Last year we provided over 500 carloads of business for the BNSF alone yet if we call them up for a delivery date for our cars for our mixing yard the timeframe it will be delivered can be 2-3 days from when it was promised. We are not on a branch line for our SIT yard we are located on the former Santa Fe Mainline 90 miles outside of Chicago. They run 6 locals a week between Fort Madison and Lockport yet we have to wait days when our cars are in Fort Madison for delivery. If Norflok Southern could get them to us we would use them however they are even worse. We last year ordered and recieved over 200 cars from the NS for our 2nd SIT yard in the same town.
Yet even with us shipping and recieving a comined 1400 cars loaded and empty last year our delivery dates can not be confirmed better than 2-3 day window. I can give anyone of my customers that my drivers are making a delivery to based on his HOS status a 1 hour ETA that they will be there in at anytime. That is why the railroads can not regain their Pershible marketshare they do not care about their CUSTOMERS unless your name is JB Hunt Schiender Fedex UPS or a Power Plant. Beyond that you can basically shove it. I have seen our sales rep from the BNSF 2 times in the 6 years I have been working for my boss and both times it was to tell us they where raising the switching rate they charge us. Beyond that to even get ahold of this person they have changed them out every 6 months it seems takes 20 phone calls and multilpe emails. Anyone of our customers and we have over 100 at last count can get ahold of their rep with a phone call or if not be transferred to the Owner or VP of the company in a second to get an answer. We do not get any service for the amount of money we are spending with the Railroads. Our costs last year for what we got where almost 70 Grand for the BNSF alone just in Switching fees let alone shipping fees of close to 60 grand.
Shadow the Cats owner greyhounds even with all the new regulations that my boss has had thrown upon him in the last 16 years having to deal with the Post 9/11 security issues for clearing his drivers to haul haz mat and the resulting Insurance crisis that followed as the requirements for hauling it went from a minimum of 1.5 million to now a 7.5 millon overnight for liabilty concerns. Then throw in 5 rewrites of our HOS regulations 3 changes to our Drug and Alcohal testing requirements multiple other regulations that have been forced down our throats including the SAFER metric and now E logs. Plus for fun throw in the proposed Speed Limiter a tripiling of our fuel prices all the EPA Emisison changes his traffic levels on a normal year have grown at 5% year after year for the last 15 years. Our customers except for 2 they all have the option of using rail as their other shipping option. Why do they prefer OTR trucking it is NOT pricing we have always been the higher priced method even since the ICC regulated days on a tonnage basis. It has always been the Service that the OTR industry sells that has one over customers in most areas. We are not a produce hauling carrier at all but why should a customer that had rail access have to wait 5 days for a load of lettuce to come across the nation in a railcar in a train even on a dedicated train when 2 drivers running as a team can get it there in 2.5 days. In produce speed is time on the shelf for the stores. Now we offer a special service for our customers we buy hopper cars full of plastic pellets blend them to their needs and then ship them to their factories to be molded into products. Last year we provided over 500 carloads of business for the BNSF alone yet if we call them up for a delivery date for our cars for our mixing yard the timeframe it will be delivered can be 2-3 days from when it was promised. We are not on a branch line for our SIT yard we are located on the former Santa Fe Mainline 90 miles outside of Chicago. They run 6 locals a week between Fort Madison and Lockport yet we have to wait days when our cars are in Fort Madison for delivery. If Norflok Southern could get them to us we would use them however they are even worse. We last year ordered and recieved over 200 cars from the NS for our 2nd SIT yard in the same town. Yet even with us shipping and recieving a comined 1400 cars loaded and empty last year our delivery dates can not be confirmed better than 2-3 day window. I can give anyone of my customers that my drivers are making a delivery to based on his HOS status a 1 hour ETA that they will be there in at anytime. That is why the railroads can not regain their Pershible marketshare they do not care about their CUSTOMERS unless your name is JB Hunt Schiender Fedex UPS or a Power Plant. Beyond that you can basically shove it. I have seen our sales rep from the BNSF 2 times in the 6 years I have been working for my boss and both times it was to tell us they where raising the switching rate they charge us. Beyond that to even get ahold of this person they have changed them out every 6 months it seems takes 20 phone calls and multilpe emails. Anyone of our customers and we have over 100 at last count can get ahold of their rep with a phone call or if not be transferred to the Owner or VP of the company in a second to get an answer. We do not get any service for the amount of money we are spending with the Railroads. Our costs last year for what we got where almost 70 Grand for the BNSF alone just in Switching fees let alone shipping fees of close to 60 grand.
Yet, you are still using rail for inbound material. Why? NS std for carload is +24 hrs. UP, +28 hrs. Performance to these stds is around 80% overall. This is the state of the art.
Shadow the Cats ownerOur customers except for 2 they all have the option of using rail as their other shipping option. Why do they prefer OTR trucking it is NOT pricing we have always been the higher priced method even since the ICC regulated days on a tonnage basis. It has always been the Service that the OTR industry sells that has one over customers in most areas. We are not a produce hauling carrier at all but why should a customer that had rail access have to wait 5 days for a load of lettuce to come across the nation in a railcar in a train even on a dedicated train when 2 drivers running as a team can get it there in 2.5 days. In produce speed is time on the shelf for the stores.
There was a much longer post by the cat's owner, I just quoted part of it.
Please note that I said efficiency, not price. If the rail service does not meet the quality needed it will produce inefficiencies for the customer. These inefficiencies will drive up the customers' costs and cause the freight to move by OTR trucking. To be used rail service must be the most efficient method, and that includes meeting the customers' devlivery requirements.
As to perishable movements, if speed was the totally overriding factor the produce and meat would move by air freight. (Some strawberries and cherries do get shipped by air.)
Different fresh food items have different shelf lives. How much impact extra transit time will make is dependent on the shelf life of the item. The rail charge and any shelf life penalty vis a vis trucking are part of the efficiency calculation. On products such as chicken, pork, beef, carrots, potatoes, apples, bananas, tomatoes, etc. the rails can deliver with ample shelf life remaining. (Do you know that they ship fresh pork to Japan via ocean freight?)
Do you know how much temperature controlled OTR business is handled by teams? I'm under the impression that most of the OTR movements are with single drivers. And as long as these drivers stay legal the rails can at least come within one day of truck delivery times.
Why are we still using BNSF for most of the Chemical Coast Traffic we have NO CHOICE in the matter. UP while it does have Trackage rights on the Transcon it can not switch on it. Also our Major SIT yard is based on the old Streator Yard on BNSF property and has a 200 car capacity and it is right next to our warehouse that holds our mixing equipment for our custom blends. We have no choice. Finding a pair of 500K square feet warehouses side by side with a rail yard next to them anymore is impossible unless we move to the Chicago area and then the property taxes alone would kill our business.
If we could switch to a different railroad we would in a heartbeat. However we are basically except for what we get off the NS a captive reciever for the BNSF. We have no option but to take what they tell us to pay or we would lose about 20% of our business. The Class 1 railroads know they can give crappy service on loose car railroading as there is no way for people like my boss to get the 100 ton loads of materials they need anyway else. So we are forced to endure it. We have complained to the STB on several occasions about the BNSF service fees and levels. It did not even cause them to blink they just said pay up or lose your service. The Class 1's are not efficent movers of goods Greyhound regardless of what you may think they are efficent at shaking down what few customers they have left.
Close to 50% of all Produce on Coast to Coast runs is handled by teams products with a shorter shelf life moves that way. Items that last like melons apples pears or things you want to ripen a little bit as they are picked green like avacado or peaches are shipped with solos. With the current HOS and how hard they crack down on violations carriers had to adapt to running teams on them for produce runs or be shut down. So they changed their running methods a Team will run the load to a drop yard about 100 miles from the destination then a regional driver that gets home every week will grab it and make the final delivery and reload the trailer for a team going back the next day.
Basically what OTR companies have done is become the Red Ball express with their team trucks to get it close to delivery then they hand it off to a regional driver for final the team grabs a load going the other direction and gets it to another regional driver the night before delivery. However they do this on a 2-3 day schedule. 3 days coast to coast max and 2 days Chicago to West Coast.
Shadow the Cats ownerFinding a pair of 500K square feet warehouses side by side with a rail yard next to them anymore is impossible unless we move to the Chicago area and then the property taxes alone would kill our business.
Have you looked at Rochelle, IL? Or is it too far away from your customers?
greyhounds said in a previous post on this Thread: [snipped]"...Please note that I said efficiency, not price. If the rail service does not meet the quality needed it will produce inefficiencies for the customer. These inefficiencies will drive up the customers' costs and cause the freight to move by OTR trucking. To be used rail service must be the most efficient method, and that includes meeting the customers' devlivery requirements.
Different fresh food items have different shelf lives. How much impact extra transit time will make is dependent on the shelf life of the item. The rail charge and any shelf life penalty vis a vis trucking are part of the efficiency calculation. On products such as chicken, pork, beef, carrots, potatoes, apples, bananas, tomatoes, etc. the rails can deliver with ample shelf life remaining..."[snipped]
Recalling that in the era of multiple 'named', and 'un-named' passenger trains on the ICRR; regular shipments of strawberrues (in season) came out of Southern Louisiana to many 'northern' destinations via IC Baggage cars (and multiples, there of). And then there were the reefers of the 'Banana Trains' out of Gulf Coast ports. They were re-iced at South Fulton, Ky., and sent on north. It was a pretty successful business, through the 1950's. and sort of started dying out in the 1960's as Passenger trains were cut back(?).
I had hoped that AMTRAK might go after some of that business with their fleet of boxcars, but they seemed to be more interested in mail and maybe, on some routes cargo. Timed trains seems to be, at times, less of a priority for their current operational paradigm (?).
Shadow the Cats owner Why did Roadrailer traffic fail my boss said it this way. Why pay 300 bucks in Drayage fees plus the rail rate for a load to move 700 miles for a total of about 900 bucks when a trucking company will do it all door to door for just over a grand and be there 1 day faster.
Also, Roadrailer had a lower threshold to be profitable. You only needed stone flush with the top of the rail and a small(er) forklift to have a yard. No need for oversized, expensive, cranes or piggy-packers. It could operate in a lane with only 100 units/day on a spoke of the network.
Shadow the Cats ownerWhy are we still using BNSF for most of the Chemical Coast Traffic we have NO CHOICE in the matter.
You missed my point. You could haul it OTR. You don't have to ship anything by rail, ever.
I know that from startup until about 10 years ago, 90% of the Triple Crown Roadrailer business was auto parts, mostly for the domestics I believe. Take a look at the service network - assembly plants at every end point. They were trying to get into more diversified general freight, but it wasn't going well. Maybe since then things changed, but I suspect that if you want to know who's hauling the Roadrailer freight now, go see whose trailers are parked at the auto plants. It won't be independent truckers.
Last year alone we shipped 70,000 tons of custom blended plastic resins. That means on a weekly basis we ship 52 trailer loads of resin out that blended to our Customers Needs. If we had to haul it ourselves up from the feedstock plants to our warehouse it would require another 220 trucks to just haul the feedstocks we need on a weekly basis. We use the BNSF and the NS because they offer us large amounts of the plastic resin we mix to our customers blends we get a discount on the price which we pass on to our customer keeping those jobs in the USA instead of having them go overseas. We just wish the BNSF and NS would show their customers the same level or respect we give our customers even our smallest one gets. We have a customer that only ships with us 3 times a year we treat them like they ship 500 loads a month.
Here is our normal load count on the BNSF 5 cars in on Monday 5 out 5 in on Friday with 5 pulled NS is 3 or 4 once a week in and out. We do that for 50 weeks a year the last 2 weeks of the year are down time for us for Maintance.
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