I was recently watching the History Channel, and there was a segment looking over UPS's delivery process. It failed to mention of much rail is involved with UPS and that got me wondering just how much (percentage wise) of UPS's business is done with the rail industry? Like 50% of J.B. Hunt's business is done through a partnership with the railroads.
If anyone can tell why FedEx has not used rail as much as UPS has, I would be greatly appreciate it.
This article on Willow Springs has some numbers for that facility-
http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=549
UPS is Union - Teamsters. Its cheaper to run cold-day air freight via train or ground service freight vs. running a Teamster 2,000 miles.
FedEx on the other hand is not union represented and brokers a lot of their OTR freight out to other carriers and moves on highway.
There are certain "UPS trains" or often referred to as "Mail trains" that run on certain corridors. It is interesting to observe these trains and estimate the number of UPS trailers on the train. The UPS branded trailers are easily spotted, there are usually a number of "leased" trailers which might contain UPS freight.
Last week a WB NS thru Porter had about 150 trailers or JBHunt type containers. I estimated about 15-20 were UPS, some of which were 28' pup trailers.
Years ago, Trains had an article on Santa Fe's intermodal marketing (pricing and service levels). It would be interesting for Trains to update that article with a close look at the customer base of intermodal service, including stacks, domestic containers, and trailers.
Ed
FedEx's business has always been speed. Trains aren't known to be especially speedy in delivering; more for low-cost freight for bulk: gravel, coal, large machinery units, lumber, where speed is secondary, and precision delivery times are required.. This is probably why FedEx/train connections aren't many or well known.
UPS is also pretty big on speed and is willing to pay for it. Consider the "bullet train" test train run by BNSF a few years back at the behest of UPS. BNSF found that operating the train caused more problems than justified by the additional revenue and declined to bid on the service. UPS also has a lot more volume than FedEx so intermodal service makes more sense for them.
UPS uses a large 'networked' system of air/rail/trucks to move packages. FedEx picked up a ground carrier to form FedEx Ground. The drivers are 'contract' for the most part. There has been an argument about which federal agency has the 'watch' on each of these carriers.
I have no numbers, but UPS is much larger and moves lots of 'heavier packages that FedEx Ground normally does not handle. UPS is so large that they can reserve 'wells' or even trains for their transcon business. BNSF and UPS have a long relationship. Overnight service will use 'air'. I would suspect that most of the UPS business is small packages, with a typical 5 'working business' days delivery. This fits into the Chicago-California 'Transcon' perfectly.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I recall from the foggy recesses of a intermodal meeting many moons ago, that any UPS move over 500 miles went by train. I'm not sure if this is still accurate or not, but we seem to be moving a lot of UPS traffic in the 400 to 1000 mile corridor. I am seeing more and more FedEx ground traffic too. Remember FedEx is a rather recent entrant into ground transport.
They are the hottest trains on the railroad, and are watched like hawks. When a UPS train comes on the subdivision everything goes into a siding.
I once had to set out a UPS car because of excessive wheel damage, on a Sunday when our ramp is normally closed. Well I got a call every 30 minutes about the car, and the ramp manager himself came in to unload the trailer, so we could truck it the rest of the way.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
I find it interesting to sometimes figure out if my UPS shipments traveled by rail at some point. Usually, look at my tracking info and comparing the intermodal times, with the arrivals & departures. Course it is all assumption & educated guessing.
Maybe is speeds were improved there would a lot more UPS & FedEx shipments by rail.
I saw a couple of Fedex Ground trailers on a train today.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
About a month ago a large number of old railroad magazines were available and I became the lucky owner. These magazines included The Diamond which is published by The Erie Lackawanna Historical Society. Their Vol. 21 No 4. issue has an article entitled "Erie Lackawanna and United Parcel Service - Part 3". The article is a rather detailed look at the EL/UPS relationship including volumes of trailers moved. Several tables of data are provided, but this one illustrates the growing UPS business that EL enjoyed:
OCT 70 OCT 71 OCT 72 OCT 75
Westbound 50 86 120 123
Eastbound 22 39 44 56
These are the average number of trailers daily handled by EL on their trains.
Interestingly, EL handled east coast to midwest off line trailers to Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Des Moines (all handled by truck for final delivery).
Interchange piggyback business was as follows:
Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Jackson, Ms; East ST. Louis, Denver, and Salt Lake City.
Is it not interesting they would truck to Des Moines, but rail to East St. Louis? I am hoping to find parts 1 and 2 of this fascinating study.
FedEx: That is a company that has its main hub in Memphis. Now BNSF already runs double stacks to and thru Memphis with a rebuilt intermodal terminal. Also CN on the old IC also runs thru Memphis. I am not aware of how much O & Ds they have in Memphis.. The problem is that at present the connections to the east are rather poor by the BNSF transcon examples.
1. CSX (L&N) to Nashville - - a rather medium speed to Nashville and northbound on the old L&N to Louisville and onto Cincinnati is no transcon speed. Beyond Cincinnati is also no speed demon until you can connect with the rebuilt CSX (B&O).
2. NS (SOU) -- to Chatanooga - Knoxville - Bristol - Roanoke - Hagerstown. This is the Crescent corridor and has been discussed extensively on other threads. Over 24 hrs needs to be cut from transit times to make this comparable to the transcon and highway competetive to I-40, I-81..
3. NS (SOU) to Sheffield - Birmingham - Atlanta (near capacity needs additional tracks and sidings) and NS northeast bound to Hagerstown which for the present is actually faster than #2. But again it is no speed demon with many bottlenecks for a good speed.
4. BNSF (SLSF) --to Birmingham ( actually quicker than NS) -- LaGrange CSX (ACL), Atlanta CSX (A&WP) much slower than NS BHM -ATL, then either NS to Northeast or CSX (SAL is much slower than NS).
5. BHM - LaGrange - Waycross - Jacksonville Still no speed demon route.
6.. Both 3 & 4/5 suffer from going into, thru, and out of Birmiingham due to tail end of Appalachian mountains running NE - SW. The mountains one reason for the CSX to short sighted (in hind sight) abandoment of direct SAL ATL -BHM route.
7. Not being a student of the layout of Memphis I do not know if there is an intermodal yard close to FedEx MEM airport sort center?
8. The Rail service into Memphis from the west by BNSF is slower than the transcon and the abandoment of CRI&P track to Little Rock certainly handicaps UP.
In conclusion it would appear that FedEx at present does not have the rail service to put a large amount of their traffic on a rail competive trains by running thru their hub in Memphis. That would not preclude low priority traffic but how much do they really have?
blue streak 1 FedEx: That is a company that has its main hub in Memphis. Now BNSF already runs double stacks to and thru Memphis with a rebuilt intermodal terminal. Also CN on the old IC also runs thru Memphis. I am not aware of how much O & Ds they have in Memphis.. The problem is that at present the connections to the east are rather poor by the BNSF transcon examples. 1. CSX (L&N) to Nashville - - a rather medium speed to Nashville and northbound on the old L&N to Louisville and onto Cincinnati is no transcon speed. Beyond Cincinnati is also no speed demon until you can connect with the rebuilt CSX (B&O). 2. NS (SOU) -- to Chatanooga - Knoxville - Bristol - Roanoke - Hagerstown. This is the Crescent corridor and has been discussed extensively on other threads. Over 24 hrs needs to be cut from transit times to make this comparable to the transcon and highway competetive to I-40, I-81.. 3. NS (SOU) to Sheffield - Birmingham - Atlanta (near capacity needs additional tracks and sidings) and NS northeast bound to Hagerstown which for the present is actually faster than #2. But again it is no speed demon with many bottlenecks for a good speed. 4. BNSF (SLSF) --to Birmingham ( actually quicker than NS) -- LaGrange CSX (ACL), Atlanta CSX (A&WP) much slower than NS BHM -ATL, then either NS to Northeast or CSX (SAL is much slower than NS). 5. BHM - LaGrange - Waycross - Jacksonville Still no speed demon route. 6.. Both 3 & 4/5 suffer from going into, thru, and out of Birmiingham due to tail end of Appalachian mountains running NE - SW. The mountains one reason for the CSX to short sighted (in hind sight) abandoment of direct SAL ATL -BHM route. 7. Not being a student of the layout of Memphis I do not know if there is an intermodal yard close to FedEx MEM airport sort center? 8. The Rail service into Memphis from the west by BNSF is slower than the transcon and the abandoment of CRI&P track to Little Rock certainly handicaps UP. In conclusion it would appear that FedEx at present does not have the rail service to put a large amount of their traffic on a rail competive trains by running thru their hub in Memphis. That would not preclude low priority traffic but how much do they really have?
Memphis is the only hub for Fed Ex Air. All Packages for Fed Ex Air go through Memphis. Fed Ex Ground, is a compilation of American Freight and Watkins that Fed Ex bought. Fed Ex Ground does have a break bulk facility (a seperate facility from Fed Ex Air) in Memphis but only freight moving through that lane (I-40 & I-55) goes through the Memphis break bulk.
blue streak 1 7. Not being a student of the layout of Memphis I do not know if there is an intermodal yard close to FedEx MEM airport sort center?
FYI : Fed Ex has gobs of facilities all over Memphis. The main air facility at the Airport BNSF's main intermodal facility(just rebuilt with 6 new big cranes) is located off Lamar Av between Shelby Dr & Perkins Rd. less than 3 miles away.
Fed Ex segregates package shipments by ground and air were as UPS mixes them. It is a big difference between the 2 operations. It mostly tends to go to their respective roots about how these 2 operations do things.
In UPS's case the air operation was a growth of the ground service(believe me they had massive teething problems in the 1980's when they started) operation into air operations and the overnite business.
Where as Fed Ex purchased an package operation that concentrated on business to business packages (Roberts Package Express & Roadway Package Service).
Rgds IGN
FTGT725Memphis is the only hub for Fed Ex Air. All Packages for Fed Ex Air go through Memphis. Fed Ex Ground, is a compilation of American Freight and Watkins that Fed Ex bought. Fed Ex Ground does have a break bulk facility (a seperate facility from Fed Ex Air) in Memphis but only freight moving through that lane (I-40 & I-55) goes through the Memphis break bulk.
Also Fed Ex Air has hubs (not satelites) in Indianapolis, In & Oakland, Ca , they have several other hubs that I'm not sure about. Fed Ex's air operation has grown so big that Memphis no longer even handles a majority of Fed Ex's air shipments.
Back in the early 1990's I was hand holding a key account in Decatur, Il. A critical overnight shipment was being shipped FedEx. Having been in logistics in my previous career, I got "involved" in the shipment by going to the FedEx terminal the evening of the shipment (lets call it Monday evening) around 7pm, just to let them know I was expecting it.
I talked to the supervisor and in pre-911 fashion, they let me hang around and we talked shop. The supervisor introduced me to the line haul driver and they explained the operations to me. The driver explained how he would take the Decatur terminals outbound packages to St. Louis for further forwarding to Memphis. He also described his view of how Memphis "worked" having flown from St. Louis to Memphis one night in the "jump seat" of the jet.
After a good night at the local Super 8, I returned around 630am. The morning supervisor assured me the package would be arriving on the inbound truck.
I waited in the parking lot, anxious about the inbound parcel. This shipment was important to me in my developing sales career. I heard a truck coming and looked up, sure enough it was the FedEx inbound truck. As it turned into the lot, it was "my driver". He honked the horn, grinned and held up the package as if it were a trophy.
They quickly "cleared" the package, I signed off and drove off. The morning crew enjoyed a box of donuts.
FedEx certainly delivered that day. "When it absolutely, positively...."
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