UlrichMaybe in five or ten years from now nobody will be hauling cars.. the cars will be able to drive themselves to the showroom floor.
Backshop One other thing to consider about hauling cars by truck OTR is the lack of sleeper cabs. Carhaulers are special models with lower cabs and shorter hoods. They have to be to haul as many cars as they do. None of them have sleeper cabs, other than the ones that haul a much smaller number of show/high value cars. Putting all those drivers up in motel rooms, if you can find them, really adds to the cost of business.
One other thing to consider about hauling cars by truck OTR is the lack of sleeper cabs. Carhaulers are special models with lower cabs and shorter hoods. They have to be to haul as many cars as they do. None of them have sleeper cabs, other than the ones that haul a much smaller number of show/high value cars. Putting all those drivers up in motel rooms, if you can find them, really adds to the cost of business.
Maybe in five or ten years from now nobody will be hauling cars.. the cars will be able to drive themselves to the showroom floor.
[quote user="Bruce D Gillings"]
ttrraaffiicc You could have said this about numerous industries that had high output many years ago. Most industries, especially consumer-oriented ones, have gone to majority trucks. There isn't any difference in auto transport. Well said by ttrraaffiicc. At one time virtually every industry in the nation used railroading for most shipping. One by one, trucking has taken that traffic away from rail. To think that it won't happen to automotive, or is not already happening, is to ignore history and its lessons. Railroading needs to change and become a customer-centric service industry. Or the decline will accelerate.
You could have said this about numerous industries that had high output many years ago. Most industries, especially consumer-oriented ones, have gone to majority trucks. There isn't any difference in auto transport.
Well said by ttrraaffiicc. At one time virtually every industry in the nation used railroading for most shipping. One by one, trucking has taken that traffic away from rail. To think that it won't happen to automotive, or is not already happening, is to ignore history and its lessons. Railroading needs to change and become a customer-centric service industry. Or the decline will accelerate.
Railroads have been changing their markets as necessary ever since the first 6 barrels of flour were shipped from Ellicott City, MD to Baltimore as the B&O's first revenue freight shipment. For better or worse, today's Class 1 railroads are not seeking out car load shippers - they are seeking out train load shippers. The train loads that the Class 1's are oprating would, in may cases, require a thousand or more trucks to haul the designated amount of product.
When I travel long distances, I normally depart at approximately Midnight and drive through the night when traffic is light to non-existant. However, when it comes time to make a 'pit stop' at a Rest Area on the Interstate, if I am towing my race car and trailer, it becomes next to impossible to find a parking place for all the trucks that are taking their Log Book Rest Period in the Rest Area. Most states have now errected computer signs to note the number of truck parking spaces that are available at the Rest Areas.
Somehow, I don't think the States really understood the demand upon Rest Area space that the computerized log book would generate. Rest Areas approacing 'big' cities are the ones that are filled up the most - drivers getting 'full rest' before going to their delivery locations and then getting whipsawed and delayed by personnel at the delivery location. Once they come off 'rest' the computer clock starts ticking.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
[quote user="ttrraaffiicc"]
NorthWestContinuing the same business model will be increasingly unviable as the shipping industry trends towards smaller shipments moving shorter distances. Shifting the business model to account for these changes is possible, however.
Possible, but unlikely. This downwards trajectory is nothing new.
The unfortunate part is that this doesn't take into account the disruption caused by new trucking technologies.
On the topic of auto transport though, the presentation confirms that rail's market share of vehicle transport is weak and that trucks carry out the majority of vehicle transportation for automakers.
I highly recommend watching the whole presentation if you have the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUnryZuy8g&feature=emb_logo
Continuing the same business model will be increasingly unviable as the shipping industry trends towards smaller shipments moving shorter distances.
Shifting the business model to account for these changes is possible, however.
MARTIN STATION As someone who has worked at an auto plant, I could not imagine shipping vehicles without doing so by rail. I don't know if we could find enough trucks to move everything we made, not to mention the road congestion at the plant and local highways and interstates especially with the perpetual road construction. And arriving parts are always running behind in the winter snow storms, much more by truck than rail.
daveklepper Just arrived on my in-box, affecting truck reliablity, from the Orlando Sentinal: All lanes blocked north on SR 429 where semi flips near Turnpike A driver was transported to the hospital following an accident Wednesday morning involving an overturned semi truck off State Road 429 at the entrance to Florida’s Turnpike blocking all S.R. 429 northbound lanes.
Just arrived on my in-box, affecting truck reliablity, from the Orlando Sentinal:
Gramp Gad, talk about Amazon. Fulfillment and delivery centers going in all over it seems. And air freight, too. Not a rail or tie in sight.
Gad, talk about Amazon. Fulfillment and delivery centers going in all over it seems. And air freight, too. Not a rail or tie in sight.
Yet on a recent trip to Deshler I saw dozens of of Amazon Prime containers riding on the rails...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Efficiency, labor and fuel, is reflected in the prices charged for shippers. In the end, rail has the ability to provide just as reliable service as truckers do. If they make the effort.
Please remove.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
The problem is that fuel efficiency doesn't mean a crap to a shipper. He's concerned with getting a suitable level of service and security for the lowest price that provides it. Unless the 'efficiency gains' translate into dollars they don't matter, and moreover if the QoS isn't there, or in fact gets worse, no amount of discounting that covers your OR may avail you.
Now it is true that shippers are acutely aware of surcharges and other inefficiency-excusing fees and costs. Unlike truck lines or 'freight forwarders' he cannot casually pass along higher factor costs -- 'the buck starts there'. But if (as so many are increasingly concerned) the " "economies" of fake PSR drop aggregate revenue below comfortably-numb cherry-picking to lazy full asset utilization at austerely-nanipulated OR... there will be problems, and to the extent there are better road alternatives that can be made cost-effective enough with better QoS and less condescension you will indeed see many current rail customers 'jump ship never to return' until the railroad paradigm changes... and it will be very, very hard even with dedicated and effective railroad employees to get many of them 'back' again.
We agree. A good overall, all our existing customers and looking for new ones, marketing stragtergy is needed. Judging from the posted interfview, CN already has it. Who will be next? Will BNSF partner with Hunt? Can KCS find a partner or go into trucking? And the others?
daveklepper Ulrich and others have completely forgotten the savings in energy and in labor that steel wheel on steel rail has over rubber on asphalt or concrete. In terms of energy efficiency, varying with grade, curveture, wind, etc. rail is about three to five times as efficient as road. If trucks were autonomous without any labor, then the vast productivity of a 1200 foot freight train over 200 feet most of truck cab, trailer, second and third trailers, would be negated. I don't expect driverless automatic operation of road vehicles in the lifetime of anyone living today. Automatic operation, maybe, with with a driver present as on all real automated isolated rapid transit systems. Even aiport people-movers have a central control desk to monitor operations by one person. I think Hunt understands this, even if you don't. BNSF doesn't need to compete with itself with over-the-road trucking. It does need a smarter marketing plan, wherein just as Hunt essentially sells BNSF services to its customers by its use of BNSF intermodal, so BNSF should make use of Hunt when it is obvious road will better meet a particular customere's need. Meanwhile, CN does own trucking companies with licenses to operate in the USA and seems to now have marketing smarts. Bet they are already shifting some traffic from rail to road where appropriate, as well as doing the reverse.
Ulrich and others have completely forgotten the savings in energy and in labor that steel wheel on steel rail has over rubber on asphalt or concrete.
In terms of energy efficiency, varying with grade, curveture, wind, etc. rail is about three to five times as efficient as road.
If trucks were autonomous without any labor, then the vast productivity of a 1200 foot freight train over 200 feet most of truck cab, trailer, second and third trailers, would be negated. I don't expect driverless automatic operation of road vehicles in the lifetime of anyone living today. Automatic operation, maybe, with with a driver present as on all real automated isolated rapid transit systems. Even aiport people-movers have a central control desk to monitor operations by one person.
I think Hunt understands this, even if you don't. BNSF doesn't need to compete with itself with over-the-road trucking. It does need a smarter marketing plan, wherein just as Hunt essentially sells BNSF services to its customers by its use of BNSF intermodal, so BNSF should make use of Hunt when it is obvious road will better meet a particular customere's need.
Meanwhile, CN does own trucking companies with licenses to operate in the USA and seems to now have marketing smarts. Bet they are already shifting some traffic from rail to road where appropriate, as well as doing the reverse.
I didn't forget about the efficiency of steel wheel on rail... in fact I stated that railways are far from done. All I said in a nutshell was that railroads need to start thinking as multimodal transportation vendors instead of simply flogging one mode and only taking care of some of their customers' needs. Ideally all customers would prefer one or a small number of vendors who can do it all. They don't want to partner with 100 vendors, with each one having only a narrow area of specialty. Which would be better? Vendor1: Can do rail shipments throughout the eastern US.. Two: a vendor who can do truck and rail throughout North America and to and from everywhere else on the planet? Number 2 would be better.. they can do more for the customer, and their value in the marketplace would be correspondingly higher.
Amazon built their Edmonton, AB facility literally across the street from CP's future expanded intermodal terminal site. Of course, it is also a 10 minute drive away from our airport, and 20 minutes away from CN's intermodal terminal, which is itself surrounded by other relatively new warehouses and distribution centres without direct rail access.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I have yet to see an automated warehouse that is rail-specific. And I really don't any time soon, because little of that equipment can handle containers directly on rail vehicles. Instead you have random truck access to docks and gates, with the automatic loading and dunning equipment working essentially in controlled environment under roof, but all the trucks can subsequently stage for efficient and rapid load at an actual, logical concentration point located where actual railroads can provide efficient forwarding.
For a long while BMW (before they built large numbers of vehicles here) used only European-style soft-sided trucks for all their deliveries -- this provided assured attended quality both in loading/unloading and in transit. It has been noted that above a certain daily quantity to be transported, you run out of money for all the required trucks, to say nothing if the drivers. Only the latter issue is helped much even by full professional-driving autonomy, and I expect Musk to be on Mars before he figures that out both satisfactorily and cost-effectively at the same time... or how to secure high-value cargo cheaply against damage when, as the old sexist tire commercial had it, 'there's no man around'.
Now I don't give Musk too long before all the other autonomous truck players begin to squeeze him badly, in a space where there will be few if any Teslarati fanbois championing him when he builds stuff that takes too long and doesn't do real-world truck right. I predict that is when he discovers autonomous rail MU control from BEVs, and the world changes again...
BaltACDConsidering the history of governmental intervention whenever railroads started thinking multi-modal in their transportation offerings, I would not expect the carriers to invest time and effort into non-railroad transportation ventures only to have it quashed by the Feds.
That was certainly true in the ICC era. I don't think that would be true anymore, as long as it is handled by a separate subsidiary like CN's intermodal trucking, so there's no temptation to cheat and haul across the country on a truck.
The railroads already offer dray truck operations. It would be a significant step into the trucking market, but Amazon just made the leap. They're working on being a total logistics company.
That's the future. As Ulrich says, make it easy for your customers.
ttrraaffiicc Honestly, this should be the going plan for railroads. There isn't any future for steel wheel on steel rail operations. The technology already suffered massively at the hands of trucking, but the jump that is about to be made by road freight in increased weight, electrification and autonomy will basically make it so that railroads are not a viable method of transport. Railroads could make the best of it by repurposing their RoWs. A paved Southern Transcon for autonomous electric trucks could bring huge increases for capacity and and speed of freight delivery while greatly decreasing costs.
To paraphrase 'When Harry met Sally' - I am NOT going to have what he is having.
I have never been that whacked out - even when I was on PAM (Patient Administered Morphine) during my colon cancer surgery.
It is evident that someone has absolutely NO IDEA of all the materials that are required to keep a vehicle assembly plant in operation, as well as moving the the vehicles produced on the output side of the operation. Auto racks haul 12 to 18 vehicles per rail car; truck auto carriers are half or less of that number; additionally with the staggered manner vhicles get loaded on auto carrying trucks it takes much longer to load a truck than it does a rail car.
The traveling public features that the number of trucks on the highways at present is excessive - the number of trucks required to 'replace' railroads would have the Interstate System in a condition of perpetual gridlock.
n012944 Bruce D Gillings If the railroads want to be moving autoparts where the vendors/suppliers are not within a relatively short distance from the plants, and moving finished autos, they will need to up their game on service. Management is increasingly focused on moving parts and finished autos in long, unreliable trains that cannot meet schedules. They view the world from a rail-centric paradigm and focus on THEIR costs, rather than a customer-centric paradigm wherein they understand their role in minimizing supply chain costs for the auto industry. Hmm..... https://www.progressiverailroading.com/csx_transportation/news/Toyota-honors-CSX-with-logistics-excellence-award--60839 Yep, sounds like Toyota is fed up with the service.
Bruce D Gillings If the railroads want to be moving autoparts where the vendors/suppliers are not within a relatively short distance from the plants, and moving finished autos, they will need to up their game on service. Management is increasingly focused on moving parts and finished autos in long, unreliable trains that cannot meet schedules. They view the world from a rail-centric paradigm and focus on THEIR costs, rather than a customer-centric paradigm wherein they understand their role in minimizing supply chain costs for the auto industry.
As someone who has worked at an auto plant, I could not imagine shipping vehicles without doing so by rail. I don't know if we could find enough trucks to move everything we made, not to mention the road congestion at the plant and local highways and interstates especially with the perpetual road construction. And arriving parts are always running behind in the winter snow storms, much more by truck than rail.
I wonder what the daily output is at a Telsa plant compaired to the other auto companies? We were putting out about 1600 vehicles every day five to six days a week and I think other plants produced far more. And even with everything we were shipping by rail, what was going by truck and parts being delivered added to employees coming in and leaving made local traffic congestion an issue not to mention again constant road construction. Not to mention just one bad accident bottling everything up. How many trucks would it take to replace two or three locomotives pulling auto carriers? Reality has a way of putting things in perspective.
Ralph
ttrraaffiiccHonestly, this should be the going plan for railroads. There isn't any future for steel wheel on steel rail operations. The technology already suffered massively at the hands of trucking, but the jump that is about to be made by road freight in increased weight, electrification and autonomy will basically make it so that railroads are not a viable method of transport. Railroads could make the best of it by repurposing their RoWs. A paved Southern Transcon for autonomous electric trucks could bring huge increases for capacity and and speed of freight delivery while greatly decreasing costs.
So what is your deal?
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
Or simply use the interstate highways.. no need to repurpose anything. I don't think the railroads are done by any means...But going forward they need to quit thinking of themselves as railroads and start marketing themselves as multimodal transportation providers. CN (to use one example) took a big step in that direction with their purchase of TransX and the intermodal portion of H&R.. Ostensibly they did that to gain access to the retail transportation market.. i.e. get rid of the middleman by buying the middleman and keeping the marketup they were getting in house. Look at it from a customer's perspective: You've got a bunch of freight to move.. so long as it gets delivered in a timely manner do you really care if goes truck or rail? Of course not.. here's my freight.. take it off my hands please and deliver it as quickly and as cost effectively as possible. From that standpoint (the all important customers' standpoint) it would make alot of sense to finally dispense with the intermodal rivalry that is a holdover from before Staggers..and which nobody outside of the transportation industry cares about. Oddly we often hear that transportation is a highly competitive business... yet.. most transportation vendors today (truck/rail/other) leave the low hanging fruit hanging because "we're a railroad".. "we're truckers".. etc.. the freight doesn't fit our basket so we walk right on by.
UlrichIf cheap electric trucks do come about then what's stopping CSX or any other railroad from buying them? So freight that no longer moves over the raiload still generates revenue for the carrier, albeit using trucks that travel on subsidized roads. And where it makes sense to ship rail then by all means continue to do so. Use the tool that's most appropriate for the job.. what a concept.
Honestly, this should be the going plan for railroads. There isn't any future for steel wheel on steel rail operations. The technology already suffered massively at the hands of trucking, but the jump that is about to be made by road freight in increased weight, electrification and autonomy will basically make it so that railroads are not a viable method of transport. Railroads could make the best of it by repurposing their RoWs. A paved Southern Transcon for autonomous electric trucks could bring huge increases for capacity and and speed of freight delivery while greatly decreasing costs.
NorthWest Ulrich If cheap electric trucks do come about then what's stopping CSX or any other railroad from buying them? So freight that no longer moves over the raiload still generates revenue for the carrier, albeit using trucks that travel on subsidized roads. And where it makes sense to ship rail then by all means continue to do so. Use the tool that's most appropriate for the job.. what a concept. This is common elsewhere in the world, and it leads to flexible thinking I don't see here, where railroad thinking tends to be very rail-centric.
Ulrich If cheap electric trucks do come about then what's stopping CSX or any other railroad from buying them? So freight that no longer moves over the raiload still generates revenue for the carrier, albeit using trucks that travel on subsidized roads. And where it makes sense to ship rail then by all means continue to do so. Use the tool that's most appropriate for the job.. what a concept.
This is common elsewhere in the world, and it leads to flexible thinking I don't see here, where railroad thinking tends to be very rail-centric.
Considering the history of governmental intervention whenever railroads started thinking multi-modal in their transportation offerings, I would not expect the carriers to invest time and effort into non-railroad transportation ventures only to have it quashed by the Feds.
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