CN vs E&LS and the short distance pulpwood trade

[CMStPnP]

This is concerning the short distance pulpwood trade between the Michigan UP and Wisconsin.

So I am curious.   I see these youtube videos of E&LS carrying a lot of pulp wood to paper mills and they seem to do a good business at it.   Understood E&LS is probably non-union and it is privately owned and run.

I have noticed though, not a lot of CN videos of the same.   Is it because CN does not persue this business or that CN lines are mostly through sparsely populated areas and it's lines are more difficult to shoot on video? 

Reason I mention is I remember a few years ago CN was complaining haulage of this was not profitable enough to justify purchase of log carriers and I believe at one point WisDOT offered to buy a small fleet of cars for CN if they would just commit to carrying the traffic to help the paper mills out.    Never heard anything since and I am sure there would be at least one youtube video if that whole deal ever panned out.   Did it pan out?

E&LS train hauling wood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JcY496oCaw

 

[Backshop]

I believe that this is why CN sold a bunch of marginal lines, including the one from Trout Lake to Munising via Newberry, to Watco.

[samfp1943]

Backshop

I believe that this is why CN sold a bunch of marginal lines, including the one from Trout Lake to Munising via Newberry, to Watco.

 

Recently, read an article in a rail related publicatiuon; I do not remember the name, presently, but gist was a story regarding rffrcts of PSR and various rail managements.  CN was mentioned as havinf in the laST few years; under it's' preceeding management team of having divested itself of a number of short track segments, that were then deemed as effecting totals in OR's.  

WATCO among other corporate entities has, through aquisitions,  picked up a number of thiose routes, thgat werew deemed by finance managers, as not 'fitting' into their corporate 'schemes'. 

Most likely that status was not only PSR issues, but conditions of ;short haus and their [potentials for causing issus with operating personnel pay, and the on-coming Union pay negatiations(?).

 

[dehusman]

Hauling pulpwood is a VERY low revenue business.  The money isn't in hauling pulpwood its in hauling the chemicals in and the paper out.  If a railroad (CN) can get out of hauling pulpwood, they will.

[Backshop]

Michigan's 162,000lb truck GVW limit doesn't help the railroads in competing for pulp traffic, either. Those 11-axle monsters can haul a lot, directly from the cutting site with no transload required.

michigan log trucks - Search Images (bing.com)

[Ulrich]

Likely CN didn't want the business or they and the shipper couldn't agree on price..happens all the time.

[kgbw49]

The Fox Valley & Lake Superior hauls a lot of pulpwood on the former Milwaukee Road Valley Line.

Here is the Domtar Mills pulp yard in Rothschild.

(44.8947834, -89.6185574)

Here is a large pulp loading operation in Fifield.

 (45.8750540, -90.4184000

Here is a pulp loading operation in Prentice.  Empty log cars are on a spur due south.

(45.5469908, -90.2868971)

 

[Gramp]

I don't know where the shipments originate but CN moves log and woodchip loads almost every day in locals between Neenah and the Kaukauna paper mill. 

[Joer39]

Case in point: CN's L552 that serves Billerud North America's Quinnesec, MI paper mill from Gladstone, MI hasn't carried any inbound pulpwood in it's consist as of late.  Consist is made up of boxcars and tankcars.