Boxcars vs. Intermodal

[BRAKIE]

dehusman

Not saying boxcars aren't important or aren't being used, but they are nowhere near as common as they used to be.

I suspect that would be based on location and traffic pattern.Today's 50' and 53' boxcars carry almost twice as much as a old 40' boxcar did..Some short lines makes their living delivering boxcars.

There are freight car leasing companies that's buying up used 50 and 53 foot boxcars..

We know solid reefer trains (except for the Tropacana OJ train) disappeared years ago and was recently revived by the U.P and a large produce forwarder..

I've seen this reefer train roll through Fostoria with its  64' reefers and its quite the sight and far from the old PFE trains I recall seeing on the PRR  years ago..

 

[zstripe]

NittanyLion

There's two truths as far as I'm concerned:

There's the absolute truth.  That's X railroad handled Y of cartype Z.

Then there's localized truth.  Railroad X handles Y of cartype Z in an given location.

Back home in Pittsburgh, I'm not sure I've ever seen a reefer.  Ever.  Here in VA, the only ones I see are in the Juice Train.  But where my brother lives in Ohio, I see blocks of five or six of them in a general freight all the time.  Here, boxcars are common and plentiful in the trains passing through town.  I assume most of them are full of newsprint and lumber.  Back home, they were infrequent and often the big autoparts cars.

No, the boxcar is not dead and buried once and for all, but...it may effectively appear to be in a given area.  What's most important is whether or not they'd appear in your locale (although if you're one of those do anything guys, well then go nuts I guess).

There is one more truth, that a lot of people are missing,,, There are a lot of manufacturing,suppliers,and or distributors,that do not warehouse any more. They don't have the space or,the building to accommodate,large,volumes of inventory.. So in essence,the boxcar and or containers,become their warehouse.......on wheels..

Known,Fact...

Cheers,

Frank

[BRAKIE]

zstripe

So in essence,the boxcar and or containers,become their warehouse.......on wheels..

Indeed..The boxcar still has uses and shippers are using them.

Another overlooked fact is the railroads distribution centers that  load/unload boxcars for off line shippers and receivers.There are contract warehouses that unload boxcars for their customers and store the material or merchandise till needed..Then when the warehouse customer calls these items is rubbered to their customers stores* or manufacturing plant.

*When a  merchandise order comes into the warehouse the customer's item(s)  is pulled,priced and repacked before it ships to the customers stores..

 

[charlie9]

i finally have to shoot my mouth off on this.  a personal experience from many years ago.  i wonder how much early intermodal success was at the expense of lucrative box car traffic.   sometimes railroad management shoots itself in the foot.

i know change is often inevitable and if you don't do something, your competition will, but here is the case in point;

we were hauling a metal product from the St Louis area to Phila. Pa. in box cars going at a rate of minimum weight 120,000 lbs and a revenue of about $2000.00 each car load.  our intermodal sales people attacked the customer and convinced them to go with piggy back service.  a trailer minimum weight of 40,000 lbs at a cost of a little over $500.00 per trailer. 

i brought this up and the regional sales manager said there were factors i did not understand such as car utilization.    let me see, 1 box car = 2000 bucks vs. 3 trailers plus one and a half flat cars for only 3/4 of the revenue.

oh, and by the way, we provided the drayage for the trailers on both ends.

i guess that was progress.

charlie

[BRAKIE]

charlie9

i guess that was progress.

charlie

Or as I called it railroad management at its best.. sadly shakes head.

I never could understand their logic or is it their misguided logic?

[charlie9]

yeah, brakie.  the sad thing was we switched this traffic on both ends so we kind of had them locked in and i thought we should wait until the B&O or some trucking outfit tried to pirate the business away before we took such a cut in revenue.  olin corporation and the us mint were not going anywhere.

i don't want to start a horror story contest but we lost a real good shipper because the stations department wouldn't pay the overtime needed to generate the customer's freight bills.  they wanted to pay up on a regular basis and sometimes went 2 or 3 months without getting a bill.  then they would get hammered with tens of thousands of dollars in past due notices.   all to save paying some billing clerk a little time and a half.  this wasn't a service issue since they were located at a joint agency location and just started giving the other road the road haul.  it was kind of sad to see their traffic manager come over to the office and beg the agent for his freight bills.  we were kind of like a church without a poor box.

only reason PRR management looked more stupid that NYC was because there were more of them.  intellectual incest in it's highest form.  oh, well, at least they only mated with their own kind.

[dehusman]

Never confuse revenue and profit.  It is quite possible that because of the amount of handling that it takes to move boxcars, while the trailers generated less revenue, they had lower cost and generated more profit.

The fact that the boxcar has to be switched on both ends (and more than likely one or more times in the middle) and the intermodal car might not have to be switched at all could be a huge cost difference. 

 

[NittanyLion]

This was an unusual move, but I just saw a train of approximately 60 cars.

Every single one was a CSX boxcar.

[Rastafarr]

NittanyLion

This was an unusual move, but I just saw a train of approximately 60 cars.

Every single one was a CSX boxcar.

Interesting. For whatever reason, I haven't seen a single boxcar since this thread started. On the other hand, it's always nice to chase the Canadian on my way to work. 

[BRAKIE]

Rastafarr

NittanyLion

This was an unusual move, but I just saw a train of approximately 60 cars.

Every single one was a CSX boxcar.

Interesting. For whatever reason, I haven't seen a single boxcar since this thread started. On the other hand, it's always nice to chase the Canadian on my way to work. 

 

That's a oddity..Boxcars can be seen on the NE Corridor.

[Rastafarr]

BRAKIE

Rastafarr

NittanyLion

This was an unusual move, but I just saw a train of approximately 60 cars.

Every single one was a CSX boxcar.

Interesting. For whatever reason, I haven't seen a single boxcar since this thread started. On the other hand, it's always nice to chase the Canadian on my way to work. 

 

That's a oddity..Boxcars can be seen on the NE Corridor.

And, naturally, the very day I complain about not seeing boxcars, I spot a westbound mixed freight with at least thirty of them right behind the AC44s. Pleasant surprises, right?

Stu

[Great Western]

Anyone who watches the Roanoke railcam, Roanoke VA, will tell you there are many trains which pass through with lots of boxcars in the consist.  There are many totally containers trains.

I think it can be said that most types of Class 1 traffic can be seen, at one time or another, passing through Roanoke.  Recently, and I believe they are new cars, could be seen grey coloured ore cars.

 

[dti406]

Remember, a lot of the present container traffic is overhead shipping, with some going to the East Coast for transshipment to Europe.  With size limitations in the Suez Canal it is cheaper and faster to ship containers to the West Coast, unload move on trains to the East Coast then load for Europe.

A lot of this traffic will go away when the Panama Canal opens its new locks that will accomodate today's container ships.

Rick J