I've noticed quite a few moves of empty container well cars during the past week on the Rochelle camera - mostly on the UP and in both directions. Who absorbs the cost on baretable trains - the railroad, the shipping company, TTX?I suppose there could several answers to this question depending on the need behind it. UP itself might need to match well cars of a certain type between terminals on a day to day basis due to demand (particularly for the short distance between Global III in Rochelle and the two centers in Chicago. If, however, there is a long-term imbalance that stacks up a bunch of wells in Chicago or on the east coast while they're going to be needed at the Pacific ports, who pays for the transcontinental repositioning? In addition, many ship lines like to unload in Southern California, then work north to Seattle or Vancouver and take on the westbound boxes there - for a long time, UP ran several baretable trains from the Pacific Northwest to the LA area each week. Did the container lines pay for these moves as via a "rail car" rate, or did the railroads "bake" the cost of the predicted moves into the overall rates?
There are 3 Major IM yards that UP has in that area. Global 3 just west of the Rochelle webcam. Global 2 at the old Proviso yards near Chicago and Global 4 near the old Joilet Aresnal south of there. I would suspect that they move empties as needed to and from there. Heck I see them all the time near my house on the BNSF going to Chicago. I have no clue where they get them I live Just south of Streator in Reading.
carknocker1 Bear table moves are quite common the railroads usually pay the cost as they need to rebalance the terminals
Bear table moves are quite common the railroads usually pay the cost as they need to rebalance the terminals
In this area [South of Wichita] baretable moves seem to happen with some regularity. Monday AM, there was a Westbound move of 'well-style' cars; then this AM there was, at about the same time, an Eastbound move of well cars. I know they BNSF has to ballance their needs, but sometimes they leave the casual, track-side observer just wondering.
samfp1943 carknocker1 Bear table moves are quite common the railroads usually pay the cost as they need to rebalance the terminals In this area [South of Wichita] baretable moves seem to happen with some regularity. Monday AM, there was a Westbound move of 'well-style' cars; then this AM there was, at about the same time, an Eastbound move of well cars. I know they BNSF has to ballance their needs, but sometimes they leave the casual, track-side observer just wondering.
Since there are Northern and Southern parts of BNSF in addition to East-West, in some cases, I expect, moving the tables N & S is more difficult than running them E & W. Despite what I may look like on the outside, there are overriding considerations that have it make economic sense for BNSF.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I am wondering with particularly TOFC business down, that the NS is running baretables in their TOFC trains just to shuttle between terminals....sort of like an airline with a fixed number of seats in a jet. If you have 200 seats, you do not remove 50 if you only have 150 passengers.
Perhaps the railroads do not have storage for a certain volume of cars at terminals such as Englewood in Chicago and thus shuttle back and forth.
Just a thought.
Ed
It seems to me that we have discussed something like this before. I recall that it was said that certain IM facilities have cars assigned, to make certain they always have cars availiable, and if they can't be returned loaded they return empty. That may account for some bare table moves.
I know UP runs them too. It's not unusual to see them, sometimes empty trains meeting each other. I've been on one such move where we met an empty. I've also been put in the hole, 15 miles from our destination terminal because we are told we are waiting for the Z train. 90 minutes later what shows up is an empty bare table move after which we get a signal. Z train my (self-censored).
Recently, I met a 13000 foot stack train. The first half was loaded with containers, the second just empty well cars. Part of the plan to get the OR down to 55, I guess.
Jeff
At some terminals switch crews are not always available to move the empties.
If you need the room for an incoming train you have to have the track clear.
Chuck
On the Import/Export business - one doesn't necessarily have a ship arriving with 1000 containers each and every day like clockwork. Shipping schedules by ocean carriers area nominally set up on weekly, bi-weekly or monthly service. When a container ship arrives, there has to be something or somewhere to put the off loading containers, as well as store the arriving containers for their scheduled outbound ship.
Baretables are needed, when and where they are needed and in the way when they aren't.
Ideally, every container, once unloaded at the consignee, would be re-loaded by another shipper in the vicinity and shipped back to the origin ramp where it was first loaded. In my stint as an intermodal clerk for an Eastern RR, that might happen once in 1,000 containers.
Ideally, intermodahal marketing departments would have enough shippers in the area to reload the containers and send them on their way. Pool containers (eg, non-private owners) generally come back empty and are usually sent as a 'repo' to a ramp like Chicago that has a large requirement for empties to be loaded. Unfortunately, the cost of repo shipments is borne by the railroad.
Privately container/trucking companies such as Schneider, JB Hunt, and UPS, do all they can to avoid sending empty repos, as they have to pay a lower 'empty' rate for each container or trailer. There's also no reason a privately owned container or trailer that arrives via railroad "A" gets sent loaded or unloaded, back on the same RR. It could be taken to a competitor RR ramp, or even hauled over-the-road to just about anywhere.
What all this means is there is practically never a 'balance' of inbound and outbound containers & trailers at any particular ramp. Sometimes there's too many containers to 'fit' available space on outbound trains (almost always empties). This could be the result of seasonal variances, shortened train lengths due to cold-weather length restrictions, or even many hours late arriving trains to make space for outbound containers (floods, derailments, etc). Thus, the need for baretables and empty bucket cars going ramp-to-ramp.
Sometimes the opposite is true, not enough containers to fill up a given outbound train. Most often, due to limited intermodal yard trackage, empty cars cannot be 'kept' because the total length of inbound trains in the next 12-24 hours would not have space to be spotted for unloading. As is common, the post-holiday season shipping slowdown empty containers are stored wherever there is space. They get stacked 2 or 3 high on the ground at various ramps. That means there's empty bucket and spine cars going 'to storage' wherever there's space for them.
So, even in the unusual-seeming situation where bare tables/empty buckets are going both directions at once, it may be due to situations like buckets going one way and bare tables the other, maybe one train going to storage and the other to a yard that needs them, or even a 'back tracking' of sorts like baretables going Denver to Chicago meets a baretable train going Chicago to Kansas City. They'd both be on BNSF west of Chicago until the route splits.
Some reimforcement for the "make some room" case - I just saw BNSF bring the same train of empty wells east today (Wednesday) that they took west on Monday (there was a distintive multi-car piece of "street art" that I remembered). They may have taken them someplace up on the Rockford branch just to get them out of Chicago for a couple of days.
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