For what it's worth, I shipped my 1954 Citroen to Amsterdam last year in a 20 foot container. It went by truck to the CN yard north of Toronto and from there to Montreal where it was loaded onto the ship. On its return I had a lot of stuff to deal with as everyone assumed that I bought the car in Europe and was importing it. I explained that I shipped the car to use for two weeks over there and was then bringing it back.
Once I explained all that, everything went OK. I spoke to a guy at CN and asked if I could pick the car up at their yard and he said that it had to go back to the shipper in Mississauga. After a day where the car was inspected I went to the shipper where the car was in their garage and the thing that everyone said, the container had to be returned to "The rail." Not railway, railroad or train yard, but "The rail." I thought that a bit odd but my car was back, safe and sound. It cost about $6,000.00 round trip.
BNSF has moved away from contracts and places a lot of their manifest rates in what I'd characterize as semi-confidential web based tariffs. To access these rates, you must have secure log in credentials to the BNSF website.These aren't "your grandfather's" tariff rates either. They're actually pretty competitive with the rate levels in the contracts they replaced.
For the other Class 1's; confidential contract rates are still the norm for manifest traffic.
The old rate bureaus that published regulated rates in tariffs pretty much went away within roughly a five year period following implementation of the Staggers Act.
Curt
BaltACD Electroliner 1935 ...I tell this to raise a question. Does any freight move under published Regulated freight tariffs any more? Or is it all negotiated contracts. I would expect low low volume non-repetitive shippers will pay tariff rates - they don't generate sufficient traffic for a carrier to be interested in negotiating a contract.
Electroliner 1935 ...I tell this to raise a question. Does any freight move under published Regulated freight tariffs any more? Or is it all negotiated contracts.
I would expect low low volume non-repetitive shippers will pay tariff rates - they don't generate sufficient traffic for a carrier to be interested in negotiating a contract.
I've just read through all the entries under this topic. A number of folks shared good info. As with a lot of topics, the subject gets complicated, or one piece of info sounds strange without the benefit of other related info. I saw this as someone who has worked in logistics and supply chain, mostly on the commercial end, for over 35 years. Firstly, since this message stream is mostly about intermodal, I encourage those who have not read October Trains to check out the articles by Bill Stephens and Larry Gross. They cover the current state of intermodal pretty well. One thing to keep in mind, there are some significant operational considerations between ocean container intermodal and domestic intermodal. Simplistically, if 1000 containers are off-loaded from a ship, then 1000 other containers have to loaded back onto the ship before it returns overseas. Ocean containers move within a sort of closed loop with a particular carriers service network. This concept drives a lot of what happens intermodally. The good news for the steamship lines (yes, that's what they are often still called in the industry!) is that in most cases, "a container is a container." So, if a 40' box comes off a ship from Asia at the Port of L.A. and moves double-stack to NJ, that specific container doesn't have to go back to L.A. after devanning. It can load back to a company ship at the Port of NYNJ and head off to Europe.
My first company in the industry was with American President Lines. During part of my training period I was assigned to our intermodal facility at S. Kearny, NJ. APL didn't invent double-stack service, but working with UPRR they refined the well car for double stacking, and the rest is history. (Google "well car" and you should get an entry from Wikipedia with a decent summary.) When the first APL double-stack trains came into S. Kearny they had problems with broken handles on the inter-box connectors (locking the top container to the bottom one in the well). Another guy and I had to walk each side of the empty train cars replacing connectors with broken handles.
Anyway, I'm still working in the industry, but now at a point where I have a little time to indulge my railfan interests. I hope to share more in the future.
Mario
Electroliner 1935...I tell this to raise a question. Does any freight move under published Regulated freight tariffs any more? Or is it all negotiated contracts.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
MP173I have a background in LTL trucking a few decades ago, and have a customer base of trucking companies in my current career so I have a little knowledge of the trucking industry.
My dad started working for railroads back in 1928 as a secretary ot an officer. What level,, I have no idea. When I was about three, he worked for the MP and we lived in Chicago. Then he was moved to Milwaukee and when I was seven, we moved to Cincinnati. Around 1947, he was told they wanted him to move again and he aand my mother decided to remain in Cincinnati. So he left the railroad and worked for a local trucking company. He had studied and become licensed to practice before the ICC. He was proficient in filing tariffs and rating freight. He later worked as traffic manager at a few Cincinnati industries. Back in 1961, when I moved to Chicago, instead of using a moving company, I boxed up all my goods, books, utensils, TV, furniture, etc. and hauled it to a warehouse. After I located an apartment, he had an LTL truck company retrieve it from the warehouse and deliver it to my apartment in Chicago. Saved about $400 over what a mover would have cost. He knew the rates for books were low (hard to daage) and TV's were higher (more fragile). Weight x Rate x distance = cost. I had to take everything up to my 2nd floor apt. as the trucker only delivers to the 1st floor door. I tell this to raise a question. Does any freight move under published Regulated freight tariffs any more? Or is it all negotiated contracts.
MP173 I have a background in LTL trucking a few decades ago, and have a customer base of trucking companies in my current career so I have a little knowledge of the trucking industry. Plus, I tend to look at revenue per carload figures for railroads, to get a handle on what carloads and containers are generating per unit. Here is my question(s) regarding intermodal. Lets say JBH which has big agreements primarily with BNSF and NS, also with CSX on certain lanes. Is the revenue generated by NS based on the "per container" (in other words, say $700 per container point to point), or are those revenue agreements based on a certain percentage of the total move revenue...lets say Chicago to Harrisburg generates $1400 of revenue for JBH, does NS get a percentage of that? Also, with the preponderance of freight moving from west to east and the need to move empty containers back to the loading points, do the rails receive same consideration (say $700 per container) for moving an empty back from Harrisburg to Chicago?These agreements are buried deep within the confidential walls of railroad and trucking companies, but any general ideas would be great. Ed
I have a background in LTL trucking a few decades ago, and have a customer base of trucking companies in my current career so I have a little knowledge of the trucking industry.
Plus, I tend to look at revenue per carload figures for railroads, to get a handle on what carloads and containers are generating per unit.
Here is my question(s) regarding intermodal. Lets say JBH which has big agreements primarily with BNSF and NS, also with CSX on certain lanes. Is the revenue generated by NS based on the "per container" (in other words, say $700 per container point to point), or are those revenue agreements based on a certain percentage of the total move revenue...lets say Chicago to Harrisburg generates $1400 of revenue for JBH, does NS get a percentage of that?
Also, with the preponderance of freight moving from west to east and the need to move empty containers back to the loading points, do the rails receive same consideration (say $700 per container) for moving an empty back from Harrisburg to Chicago?These agreements are buried deep within the confidential walls of railroad and trucking companies, but any general ideas would be great.
Ed
The quick answer is "it depends". For the JBHunts, UPS, et.al. were the RRs have, joint, through, service, the revenue split is no doubt in the contract for the lane. Where there is no contract with the shipper, the RRs decide the revenue split (published Rule 11? I'm not sure...). Shippers have also been know to cobble together their own "through" service, say NS to Chicago, private rubber tire to UP, UP to LA, paying three independent bills. Not sure how much of this happens these days, but in the 1990s, quite a bit.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Regards - Steve
Great discussion by the "insiders". Thanks for the insite.
A few years ago, I had a project at a container yard in Chicago. They had thousands of containers stacked five high. A few months later (fall) the yard was nearly empty.
It was interesting to watch an operator place a container on the fifth level.
Lithonia Operator steve-in-kville Intermodal shipping fascinates me. I've been seeing more conatiner trains, longer trains, often with piles of empties on the back. So if a container arrives by ship, what determines if it gets transported by truck or get loaded on a train? We have the Rutherford yard in Harrisburg that handles containers. If the container arrives from overseas at Philidelphia, and its destination is between there and Harrisburg, does it go to Rutherford, get transferred to truck, only to backtrack? How can you tell that a container is empty?
steve-in-kville Intermodal shipping fascinates me. I've been seeing more conatiner trains, longer trains, often with piles of empties on the back. So if a container arrives by ship, what determines if it gets transported by truck or get loaded on a train? We have the Rutherford yard in Harrisburg that handles containers. If the container arrives from overseas at Philidelphia, and its destination is between there and Harrisburg, does it go to Rutherford, get transferred to truck, only to backtrack?
Intermodal shipping fascinates me. I've been seeing more conatiner trains, longer trains, often with piles of empties on the back.
So if a container arrives by ship, what determines if it gets transported by truck or get loaded on a train? We have the Rutherford yard in Harrisburg that handles containers. If the container arrives from overseas at Philidelphia, and its destination is between there and Harrisburg, does it go to Rutherford, get transferred to truck, only to backtrack?
How can you tell that a container is empty?
Look at the doors to see if they have a seal on them. The empties don't.
Jeff
Aha. Yes, that must be it.
I think he meant to say empty well cars.
One aspect of this is ISO box moves loaded and empty. Typically the steam lines don't want their boxes traveling far inland if no back haul is available. They want maximum utilization of their boxes, meaning as many loaded miles as possible. Let's say a Maersk vessel shows up at Pier 400 in the Port of LA. 4 40' box loads of merchandise are headed for the Midwest. If there's no backhaul on those boxes. More than likely they will head to places such as; Ontario, Colton, or San Berdoo California to get transloaded into a doemstic 53' box. The ratio is 4:3. 4 40's will fill 3 53's. If a backahul was procured of let's say soybeans sourced from Illinois going back to Asia. Those 4 40's will ride all the way to the Midwest (Maersk contracts with BNSF) Get unloaded then grab those loads of soybeans and head back to the Orient.
Bratkinson and CNSF2, Thanks to both of you for the detailed "insiders" view of an aspect of the business we seldom see.
It amazes me that there is as much "feet on the ground" involvement with containerized freight as you indicate there is. Somehow I had always envisioned that for a shipper originating loads, once the doors were closed, the next person seeing the merchandise would be the customer.
I see how wrong I was about that now,
When I worked in the industry ('90's - early '00's), contracts between the railroads and their customers typically included a minimum volume commitment, but the amount billed/paid was calculated on a shipment-by-shipment basis. Typically, the shipper was billed monthly with detail on each unit (city pair, container size, load/empty, etc) so they could see exactly how the amount due was calculated. The contract included negotiated rates for each city pair and container size the shipper planned to use. When I started, the normal practice was for the railroad to pay a rebate once the volume commitment was met, but that was a pain to administer so we simply began offering lower rates based on the volume, and if the shipper didn't meet the commitment they could expect to see higher rates in the next contract.
An exception was the original contract between J.B. Hunt and Santa Fe. That called for Santa Fe to get a percentage of the total door-to-door revenue collected by Hunt. The percentages were calculated based on a complex formula that included not just the Santa Fe ramps used, but also the total trucking miles and total door to door miles. So, for example, two loads going to the same destination point in LA but originating in at points in Iowa and Ohio equidistant to Santa Fe's Chicago ramp would pay Hunt roughly the same, to cover their similar trucking costs, but Santa Fe's rate would vary widely. The end result was that the Iowa load paid much less than Santa Fe's 'normal' Chicago-LA rate, but the Ohio load made up for it by paying more. This flexible formula was the key to the huge growth in Santa Fe's intermodal volume in the 90's. As far as I know it was unique, and Hunt had a more traditional arrangement with the other railroads. I don't know whether the BNSF-Hunt contract still works that way - they might have done away with the formulas once the big highway-to-rail shift was over and the situation had stabilized.
As to the question about container length, ISO containers for trans-oceanic shipping were originally limited to 20' and 40' sizes, and all the container ships were designed with this in mind. This was in the 1960's or early '70's, when North American domestic trailers were limited to 40', then 45'. Later, a 45' 'high cube' size was adopted for ISO containers as well, but the number of these had to be limited as they could only be stowed above deck on the ships. I suppose newer ships were designed with the 45's in mind, but as the US continued to increase trailer lengths on its roads, there was never much demand to go beyond 45' for international containers because many places in Europe and Asia lack the road clearances for anything longer than that.
I would imagine that all intermodal contracts between transportation company (Schneider, JB Hunt, UPS, Werner, Martrac, etc) are based on X number of loaded containers from A to B on railroad K per month, for 36 months. As the companies named have their own private containers and trailers, they also pay for ‘repo’ (repositioning) costs to ship some quantity of empty units from B to A, or even A to B. Because of contracted volume, the bigger transportation companies get a lower price per container if one were to calculate $2,100,000 for 3,000 containers/month = $700/container. I’d imagine that it’s a ‘fixed price’ contract in that if fewer than 3,000 loaded containers go A to B, they’ll still pay the full amount. Any overages would likely be at a higher rate, maybe $800 each times the number of additional containers. I’ve been involved in enough non-transportation ‘fixed price’ contracts to know that’s generally how it’s done.
Don’t forget there’s ‘storage fees’ at each ramp for loaded containers not taken out within 48 hours as well as some fee per privately owned chassis (Schnieder, for example) that is ‘stored’ there between uses. Storage fees are charged on a per container per occurrence basis. I think CSX was $75/day for the first 2 days after 48 hours, then $125/day after that. (Don’t hold me to those numbers, though). I think it was the trucking company taking the container out the gate that paid the fees, or maybe it was the shipper via the trucking company? The reason I say the trucking company is if the shipper was in California and it’s 6AM in the morning in Massachusetts, trying to get the shipper before 9AM California time would be a LONG wait! The storage fees had to be electronically paid in full to the CSX computers before our computer would let them out the gate. Wait times typically were 15-60 minutes, during which the trucker would have to move to ‘the penalty box’ as I called it and wait it out. I’d usually check every couple minutes to see if the fees got paid and if so, walk over to the trucker and tell him to come into the office and we’ll get the outgate completed.
Regarding ‘single source’ international shipping…
Consider if you worked for a Widget manufacturer here in the states and wanted to establish a daily shipment of 5 containers of Widgets to your customer (importer?) in France. Would YOU know who to contact in France for transport from the ship to the customer? Would they? I’d likely find some international freight forwarding company stateside that ships bunches and bunches of containers to France every day and simply leave it to their experience to determine how to get my containers full of Widgets to the dock as well as how to get them from the dock in France to my customer. Certainly, it would be a contracted deal for X number of containers per month, etc, etc.
And 20 foot international containers? One of the reasons they get transloaded to 53 footers stateside is the trucking costs. Generally speaking, 2.5 20 foot containers can be loaded into a 53 footer. As the 20 footers are also not as tall as domestic containers, for lighter weight stuff, even more can go into a 53 footer…up to the highway weight limits. Driving five 20 footers from wherever to wherever takes five truckers vs only two truckers for 53 footers. Walmart is a perfect example. They get 100s of thousands of TVs from Asia that are transloaded into 53 foot containers for delivery stateside. Could you imagine all the extra chassis and loading/unloading time at the ramps for 20 footers vs 53 footers?
As for transloading 20s into 53s, or even 53s to 53s at our yard due to a shifted load, what we normally did was put the two containers on the ground 20-30 feet apart so a forklift could grab the rearmost pallet , back out, turn 180 degrees, then drive it to the nose of the receiving container. Remember, there’s generally little if any space at the back of a container or trailer. I suspect that on or near the docks out west there’s a ‘transfer ramp’ where multiple 20 foot containers can be readily transferred to 53 footers.
I don’t think we ever had a trailer to trailer transfer due to shifted load. But if so, they’d have to both be driven to some loading dock where one could be emptied and the other simultaneously loaded. I DO remember, though, a refrigerator trailer of meat arrived and the refer hadn't run in over 24 hours due to insufficient fuel. I think the GPS unit on the trailer reported the problem to their HQ, so we knew in advance it had gone bad. It took them a couple of days to schedule some company to come in, take the trailer, empty it out and sterilize it, and bring it back empty. That had to be one smelly job!
All truckers look for a ‘back haul’ for their empty units. Moving sailboat fuel from here to there costs money. Schneider is big enough that they likely find a shipper not too far from where a container got emptied to fill it and ship it to another Schneider-serviced city. For them, Schneider has already contracted prices and may find the least cost route on a different railroad, or even over the road.
But consider smaller shippers that maybe have 1000 or so of their containers on the railroad every day. The odds of their finding a back haul to get that container back to the original location is far less. As a result, they may have to pay for a ‘repo’ (empty) to go back on the train.
Until 5 years ago, UPS owned Martrac refrigerated trailer company. We’d get several loaded Martracs every day, usually from California. Martrac had a local trucking company take them to the consignees, then bring back the empties the next day, or wherever. Martrac would then arrange (pay for) a repo back to Chicago for them to be cleaned and washed inside and out. UPS would call about 1 or 2 in the afternoon asking what Martrac repos we had waiting to get loaded on the next train. Within an hour or so, several UPS drivers would bobtail in and grab the empty Martrac. UPS would fill it with packages to Chicago (or anywhere) and get the UPS ‘discount’ shipping rate, and from UPS’ standpoint, they have saved the repo money that Martrac would have paid thereby reducing Martracs’ profits which gets passed to UPS. UPS got a ‘free’ trailer reducing their need for trailers/containers to go to Chicago. Of course, the Martrac ‘planner’ (trailer use scheduler) in Rhode Island would call later asking how many trailers did UPS ‘swipe’ that day? So they could cancel the billing. During peak holiday season, I don’t think Martrac got to send any repos as UPS would fill up anything that rolls, and rent a bunch of trailers and containers as well.
As for ‘pool’ containers like CSXU and UMXU, for example, ideally, there would be enough shippers in the Springfield MA area to fill them all up and send them on their way via CSX. Unfortunately, that never happens unless there’s a shortage of empties due to various reasons. We’d get 2-4 shortages per year lasting 1-5 days, typically. Most often, though, there’s always a bunch of empty ‘free’ pool containers going back to Chicago, or other ramps each day. We’d get an email from HQ in Jacksonville every day indicating a minimum and maximum number of pool empties to send to specific ramps, based on block destinations in our outbound trains. The overwhelming majority of empties went to Chicago (Bedford Park). And come January-March, when business slows down, we’d be instructed from Jacksonville how many containers minimum and maximum we should store here, on the ground, stacked 3 high. Intermodal ramp operation is a big chess game having the right number of empties, the right number of chassis (and private ones as needed), and the right number of outbound train spots (bucket cars, hitch cars) to get out what has to get out each day. Usually we had enough available space after loading all loads and repos to get enough pool empties out of town. But there were times we couldn’t send all the loads out due to insufficient space on the outbound trains that day, or two. We took a lot of ‘heat’ if we couldn’t get all the loads out! We’d even get complaints if we couldn’t get all the repos out that day as well!
Thanks for the reply. I guess that makes sense. In the back of my mind I was wondering if it had anything to do with the one-way flow of containers dilemma we often hear about, where they might be putting the 20' and 40' containers right back on the boat to return to Asia, letting the domestic 53 footers do the cross-continent shuffle...
Convicted OneThe whole idea of bringing a container into this country, and moving it's contents to a domestic container, which is then shipped to a distant domestic destination.....never ocurred to me .
If this is done within an intermodal port facility it may make sense to transfer 'container to container' rather than arrange for, say, a dry van or box truck with a common floor height or liftgate to be brought into the yard for crossloading. Likely a more common alternative would be to send inbound marine containers to some sort of crossdock or distribution-center facility, where it might logistically make sense to forward 'repacks' as COFC (or TOFC) on the same basis as domestically-originated traffic.
bratkinsonInternational shippers likely have a single-source company that directly and indirectly provides 'full service' shipping to their customers. They arrange to have the proper number of empty containers at the customers' loading dock, schedule truckers to take it to the seaport to be loaded on the 'company' container ship, and make all arrangements for stateside transloading to 53' containers (if desired), placement on a train to the destination ramp, and delivery to the consignee.
Could you, or someone, expand on that a bit? Perhaps I was naive, but the picture I always had in my head was of loaded containers coming into this country on a ship. Craned onto a train at a harbor, moved by rail to a distsnt hub, and then moved the last 100 miles by truck. Then, having to find it's way back to the source to repeat the cycle.
What little concept I had of "domestic containers", was that they were for shipments originated in this country, and sent to a distant destination.
The whole idea of bringing a container into this country, and moving it's contents to a domestic container, which is then shipped to a distant domestic destination.....never ocurred to me .
Is this type of a move common? Seems to me that the extra labor involved would kill the efficiency of containerization. What are the reasons for doing this?
Is it also true that there are no 53' international containers?
I wish I could tell you -- and my interests are such that I should know, at least in principle, how some of this is currently 'customarily' arranged. But I do not know specifics, and will be carefully reading the posts from those who do know to see what it is and how it has evolved from TOFC practices.
Almost all shipping, via any mode, is done on a bid/contract basis. Every shipper (like travelers, too) looks at/considers/solicits price quotes and chooses whatever combination of price, schedule, and consistency best suits their needs.
US shippers may choose an 'single source' shipping firm such as Schneider that provides door-to-door service in which the customer loads a Schneider container, a Schneider truck takes it to a nearby intermodal ramp, at the destination intermodal ramp, another Schneider truck picks it up and delivers it to the consignee. Schneider may DRIVE the load end to end as well...it all depends on cost/benefit to the shipper (eg, the customer that pays the shipping bill).
As an aside, Schneider will do everything possible to find a nearby load for a container that had been emptied at the consignee. The empty container may go 2 miles or maybe 40 miles to the next shipper for that container. It doesn't matter what routing that container will follow. It may come back to the CSX ramp it was pulled from, it may go to a different CSX ramp, or even a NS ramp! The container may be driven to the consignee if it's close enough or there's no reasonable direct intermodal routing. Until 2016 or so, Schneider containers were put on pool chassis (TSXZ, etc). Since 2016, they have their own 'private' set of chassis exclusively for their use. Trying to keep a sufficient number of chassis at each intermodal ramp is a challenge when chassis don't 'come back'. Hopefully, it balances out when we'd get a 'new to us' chassis that was formerly usually at a different ramp.
US shippers may deal directly with the intermodal division/subsidiary of a railroad (their sales staff likely calls or visits them regularly looking to drum up some business) and deal individually with intermodal-experienced trucking companies at each end, looking for the lowest cost per container, of course. The intermodal sales rep may provide a list of trucking companies to consider.
International shippers likely have a single-source company that directly and indirectly provides 'full service' shipping to their customers. They arrange to have the proper number of empty containers at the customers' loading dock, schedule truckers to take it to the seaport to be loaded on the 'company' container ship, and make all arrangements for stateside transloading to 53' containers (if desired), placement on a train to the destination ramp, and delivery to the consignee.
Like every box car, autorack car, etc, every container must have been 'billed' in advance to its destination, including each 'segment' of travel (shipper to dock, onboard a ship, dock to consignee). It's no different that a moving van for your household furnishings...you arrange in advance with the company to move yor stuff 'from where' 'to where' and how many rooms are being moved.
For what it's worth, when I was training at CSX Intermodal at the Philadelphia ramp back in 2008, we literally had our 'ship come in' across the street a couple times per week! When the ship arrived, it was already set up that maybe a dozen truckers would take a 20 foot chassis and be 'hot loaded' directly onto 'their' chassis from the ship, come across the street, and be 'hot loaded' directly on the train to Montreal Canada. They kept driving around in circles with the same chassis until all had been brought over. (Where the other containers on the ship went? I have no idea) We'd get maybe 40-50 refer containers from that ship that required separate power to run the refrigerator units on each. We had pre-loaded a sufficient number of 20 foot generator unit in the bottom well of a cars and after the cars were filled out, run heavy duty extension cords from the generator(s) to each refer box. I think there were perhaps 12 or more extension cords from each generator unit and they'd be draped from car to car as needed.
Obviously, the cost and schedule is how shippers decide what routing their products will follow. Also, each 'leg' of the container journey is bid & negotiated with whatever carrier (trucker, RR, ship) based on volume of containers being shipped daily/weekly/monthly. Big time carriers like UPS and Schneider get a better price per container (they control everything (except the trains) dock-to-dock) than smaller volume shippers that have to deal with each trucking company at each end.
Managing logistics is all about time and money. A can coming off a ship in Philadelphia destined to say - Reading can be trucked in roughly two to three hours for around $500. Moving that same can rail via Harrisburg then truck back to Reading is simply counterintuitive. It would likely take three days to make the same trip at perhaps three to four times the cost and a truck would still have to move it over the road.
I forget the old "rule of thumb" concerning rail versus intermodal but, I seem to recollect that if the move was within 400 or 500 miles it made more sense to handle it over the road than to move by rail. This may have changed some depending on driver availability and truck freight but, I'd guess it's still fairly close.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.