Is loose car railroading dead, or at least dying? I work for a lumber yard. We are in a small town, about 5 miles south from the city with the BNSF yard in it. Our rail spur faces north. This year, we have had a whale of a time getting our cars, which come one at a time. All day long, unit trains of grain, ehtanol, big, pink rocks, and empties roll by on the mainline. The local also comes by, south in the morning, north in the afternoon. Our cars come from the north. The local will head by going south, and drop the car 1 mile down the line at an elevator siding in the morning. The car is then delivered when the local is heading back north in the afternoon...or the next afternoon.... or the next... The last few weeks, we've been had problems getting cars spotted at all. I can drive by the yard in the city, and see our cars sitting there, sometimes for a week, before they are spotted. On a similar note, we purchase a lot of lumber from wholesale companies in the city. They have similar hangups with cars. They used to get daily shipments of 3 to 6 cars. "To better serve the customer" BNSF has cut that down to every other day. Both are within a mile of the yard. Is this an anomoly, or a trend? unit trains verses single cars?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
The Class I carriers are working their operations away from low volume loose car railroading. Such service is high cost with low revenue return. The local freight that serves your line segment handles how many cars, from all the customers on the line segment, per trip? Ten?, Fifteen?, Twenty?, Thirty????? That local freight - at a minimum - requires a locomotive, EOT and 2 man train & engine crew. That same investment in time, manpower and material - can handle a 130 car unit train and the revenue that results from that 130 car move.
So, if you are trying to run a railroad for profit, which movement will you give priority to servicing with limited resources of manpower, motive power and track time? I suspect you will service the unit train.
I cannot speak to how BNSF is conducting and prioritizing their business oportunities. My carrier, many years ago took commercial actions to discourage low volume loose car customers. While we still have some loose car customers, they are generally clustered in close proximity to each other and are serviced in most cases by yard jobs near major terminals. The line of road locals service customers that are generally handling 5 cars a day or more, with five to ten customers on each locals work schedule.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
This sounds familiar - either we've discussed it here previously, or it was discussed in Trains.
That said, switching single cars, or even small cuts of cars, costs money. The Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern has trackage rights on CSX to serve industries in Rome from their Utica base of operations. I'm sure that CSX finds it cheaper to serve those industries that way than to have to run a special train out of Syracuse or Selkirk.
Meanwhile, sticking a locomotive on an assembled train and hauling it from point A to point B doesn't deal with the overhead of local switching.
I still see manifest trains on the CSX Chicago line, but they are vastly outnumbered by the unit trains.
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If you're running a class one major carrier of 500 or more miles, you don't want the switching or terminal chores and costs. That's why there are short lines and terminal roads. It has been a unique and slow evolution but all involved are getting the idea down: long hauler, short line or terminal road, unions, shippers. Working together with understanding is doing well, evolving from a single major hauler to a major hauler handing cars and trains off to local haulers. But more importantly, allowing the local haulers the leeway to market the product and sell it to local industries.
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If the car needs to be spotted on the return trip, you could be up against a time problem with the crew. It could be hours of service, but also there could be an edict against overtime in effect. Your "To better serve the customer" also sounds like a cost cutting measure.
Loose car railroading isn't dead, but it's not what it used to be either. Even with single car type movements, the larger the volume, the more important you're going to be. The BNSF probably won't cry too much if your company switched to receiving by truck.
Maybe that's what they want.
Jeff
Murphy, I work in a scrap yard located about a 1/4 mile from the Union Pacifc yard in Mankato. We have the same problem. We can see our cars from our facility, but the railroad spots them in their own time. We have been told by the railroad that we will have service 6 days a week, but sometimes we don't get switched for up to 6 days. Our definition of service is a little different then theirs. The local yard crew has told our manager that we are low on the priority list because they must serve their large customers first and there may not be time to get to us every day. That's why we maintain our own fleet of trucks.
Matt
Ironeagle2006 This one reason is WHY my boss is making a Killing with his SIT Yard doing Custom Mixes of Plastic Pellets from that. Why he can mix up loads of what the Customer wants for the RR cars he has in our SIT yard put them onto either a Pneumatic or Van Trailer as required and Ship it to them. Then we can mix up their Required mix in Advance and have it ready to go. We right now have 20 Customers that Love us because they used to use the RR's and now they use us as no Multiple Hoppers needed just Unload and GO with us.
This one reason is WHY my boss is making a Killing with his SIT Yard doing Custom Mixes of Plastic Pellets from that. Why he can mix up loads of what the Customer wants for the RR cars he has in our SIT yard put them onto either a Pneumatic or Van Trailer as required and Ship it to them. Then we can mix up their Required mix in Advance and have it ready to go. We right now have 20 Customers that Love us because they used to use the RR's and now they use us as no Multiple Hoppers needed just Unload and GO with us.
Can't speak for other carriers - mine has a Bulk Distribution Services business group, they have facilities around major industrial areas and specialize in delivering Truck Load quantities of various product lines that are received at the rail owned and operated facility in car load lots. Mixing and matching is done when required. The product lines run to all forms of plastics and chemicals.
Murphy,
Loose car railroading is not dead. Railroads have always offered a variety of services, each with different revenue and service requirements. Think Express, LCL, carload, and unit train. Traditional Express and LCL are long gone. Today carload (CL) is the high revenue, high cost per unit, high service, offering as compared with bulk.
The bosses at HQ can see the trains, but they do not see cars spotted and pulled. They could, the computer system would tell them. I would talk to the local trainmaster first. If you do not get satisfaction go to Customer Service. They should have a customer advocate, probably not by that title, whose job it is to try to fix things like what is happening to you. This is NOT the clerk you release cars to. Failing that go to the market manager for lumber. May take days to catch him, but his bonus is based on contribution margin. If you generate Zero revenue, your contribution margin also goes to Zero.
As Greyhounds has pointed out on other threads the railroads have cut the Station Agent and the regional sales rep who dealt with such things in days gone by. If you want to try a bit of honey, buy the crew each a turkey. The days when a bottle of Jack Daniels would improve human relationships with the crew are also long gone.
Mac
If a company has a need for loose car loading and shipping and it is worth the price, they will use it. A company may send out multiple cars at a time but all go to separate consignees miles apart. Loose car railroading is one of the reasons for CSAO and the terminal and switching roads in places like Chicago, Houston, etc. Being able and willing to handle single car shipments is the how and why of switching and short line companies.
You point out that this is a problem of recent origin. This suggests to me that the unit train traffic has picked out so that the railroad is no longer interested in your business. They do make a profit on you but can make bigger profits on the new business.
The problem with this philosophy is that what picks up can also slack off. And when it slacks off their own efforts to alienate small companies are what has pushed these companies to use trucks. Having squandered the small but steady profit that used to sustain them in hard times if they loose the new business they are really lost.
In the meantime, I'm sure your own company will do what it has to to serve its customers.
Murphy Siding Is this an anomoly, or a trend? unit trains verses single cars?
Is this an anomoly, or a trend? unit trains verses single cars?
Probably why a lot of smaller roads (and in some cases, big ones) have created re-load or transload facilities. Easy to drop off a block of cars for several industries.
Not saying it's a perfect solution, but better than losing the business totally, I guess.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
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Remember the article or essay (editorial or "Trains Turntable"-type piece) in Trains about 8 - 12 years ago - I think it was by then-Editor Mark W. Hemphill - about how a lumber yard on a mainline siding just a few miles from a major terminal similarly couldn't get reliable service, despite being promised same by an enterprising railroad marketer/ salesman ? Not sure if it was a true story, or a synthesis of several experiences, or a hypothetical to illustrate the point and crux of the dilemma, etc.
John G. Kneiling - wherever he is now - must be smiling that smirk of his and saying "See ? I told you guys so, 40+ years ago !"
- Paul North.
Yes, Kneiling comes to mind. He used to say that as soon as railroads found that they could not make money on hauling something, they got out of that business. Kneiling would have advised finding a way to make money on the business rather than getting out of it.
I believe in the 60's the big RR did the same thing, throw the small shipper under the bus for bigger shippers. Look where that went, a boom in trucking and decades to get back to profit. Nice to hear there is still a lumber yard receiving a load. Growing up in Norther NJ the local yard had the tracks right through the store and it was neat to catch a box car being unloaded when my Dad needed lumber. But, by the mid 60's the service was so bad from the Lackawanna, they converted over to truck and never looked backed. Sad to see you're only a customer if you ship in blocks of 100 or more units, you'er a lost profit center if you don't.
Maybe a question to answer a question, but how many “loose car” customers are located on the same line within 30 miles or so?
If its under 10, then the service you are getting is about the best you can expect.
Unless a belt or terminal road is created, then the Class 1 will pretty much run a “local” when time and crew availability permits.
That’s one of the reasons most ports have a belt or terminal railroad, either as a subsidiary of the class 1 or as an independent…the very reason my railroad exist in fact.
Unless the customer base is big enough to, in the operating plan of the class 1,to justify the creation of a dedicated “daily local” the small 1 or 2 cars a week customer will be put on the back burner till a crew and yard engine is free to serve them…even “right next door to a yard” will suffer if the big traffic keeps the crews and yard busy.
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You or the owners of your lumber yard might want to sit down with other carload lumber receivers in the area and explore the concept of setting up a lumber transload facility. This has the potential of turning several smaller rail customers into one larger rail customer. All the receivers seem to be having a similar problem and this might be one way to deal with it.
If there is a yard engine in Sioux Falls? I'd suggest trying to locate such a facility so it could be switched by the yard engine. That would free the facility from dependance on local train service.
These facilities are fairly common and they offer advantages to both the lumber receivers and the railroad. The receivers can get better service The railroad only has to make one switch instead of several. (Try to get some type of service guarantee in a contract with the railroad.)
There will be some added cost for the receivers. But you'll have to weigh that expense against the cost you're now incurring with the delays. The facility could also be used by all participating lumber yards as a storage facility. If you've got the product on hand, does it matter much if it's stored at your location or at the transload facility? That could save some money for the lumber yards.
Additionally, such a facility could allow you to receive in smaller lots. Instead of receiving an entire carload of product, and then incurring the inventory carrying cost of a carload of lumber, you could split a load up with other receivers. This should save money for all receivers involved.
Alternatively, your owners could look at establishing such a facility as their own profit center.
Such transloads are being used as a solution to the loose car "problem" for lumber and other commodities such as dry bulk. If you can get a reasonable concept together the next step would be to talk to the BNSF lumber marketing people. They really don't want to loose your business. But there needs to be a better system devised for handling your business. They might jump at the chance to meet the lumber transportation needs through an improved system.
Just a thought.
Murphy Siding Is loose car railroading dead, or at least dying? I work for a lumber yard. We are in a small town, about 5 miles south from the city with the BNSF yard in it. Our rail spur faces north. This year, we have had a whale of a time getting our cars, which come one at a time. All day long, unit trains of grain, ehtanol, big, pink rocks, and empties roll by on the mainline. The local also comes by, south in the morning, north in the afternoon. Our cars come from the north. The local will head by going south, and drop the car 1 mile down the line at an elevator siding in the morning. The car is then delivered when the local is heading back north in the afternoon...or the next afternoon.... or the next... The last few weeks, we've been had problems getting cars spotted at all. I can drive by the yard in the city, and see our cars sitting there, sometimes for a week, before they are spotted. On a similar note, we purchase a lot of lumber from wholesale companies in the city. They have similar hangups with cars. They used to get daily shipments of 3 to 6 cars. "To better serve the customer" BNSF has cut that down to every other day. Both are within a mile of the yard. Is this an anomoly, or a trend? unit trains verses single cars?
That sure doesn't sound right. I used to be a Conductor for the Union pacific and it was very important that we got those cars delivered as soon as they came into the yard. With reefers you are on a time limit as they can actually run out of fuel and start to defrost while sitting in the yard. You would think people would be watching this stuff but we took millions of dollars in loses over cars running out of fuel and having 80 tons of chicken go to waste.
But on the other hand we had people who complained all the time wanting a car delivered ASAP and we would get it delivered only to have it sit there for 2 months empty. We also had some kooky industries with horrible track, and we would have a derailment every time we went in there. We would say you have to fix the track and they would put in a single tie.
My advice to you would be to speak directly to the crew. Find out where they are going and then explain who you are and what you need done. Because they probably have a good explanation of why they are doing what they do. I would also go to the yard office and talk to a manager or dispatcher.
Contracts more than anything determine when a car is delivered and when. We used to switch a steel mill in Seattle, and they had contracts with us to always have a certain amount of cars delivered to them every day. If we failed to get those cars delivered the railroad was fined thousands of dollars every day those cars didn't show up.
Many smaller industries have found common ground with the railroads. Many times a train will have to travel 10 or 15 miles on 10 mph track to deliver a single car. You burn more in diesel fuel and labor then you will be making delivering that car. So the railroad leaves the car at the spur next to the main line and the industry has a small locomotive (or track mobile) to come pick it up and take it the 10 or 15 miles.
If your boss is willing to consider a capital investment, the obvious one is to put a switch at the dead end of your track to create a double ended industry track so the crew can spot your loads on their way out and pick up empties on their way back. Your current arrangement is costing the railroad three moves to spot you. One to set out on the siding, one to pick the car up, and one to actually spot you.
BNSF may resist on the principal that they do not want another main track switch to maintain. Expect them to expect you to pay them for the switch, something in the range of $150,000, plus the connecting track from clearance point to your existing end of track by third party contractor at about $150 per foot. Switch will cost more if main track is signalled, how much depends on what they have to hang on it for signal system.
They may or may not be willing to give you a rebate against the cost of the switch. Your logic in asking for one is that you are saving them AT LEAST half an hour in crew time. They might be willing to rebate $100 per car for some fixed time period, say five or ten years. BNSF was actively looking for projects like this, which improve their effeciency, not too long ago and may still be.
The other cost you will incur is grading to make a roadbed, which will be relatively modest assuming no complications like streams, wetlands or road crossings. If a road crossing is involved costs will increase. How much is site specific.
If you do 100 cars per year, this will not pencil out at first blush. The real reason to do this is to protect your position in the market, which is parity with other rail served yards, and a substantial advantage over competitors trucking from PNW or over a transload point. You should be able to figure the options and the cost associated with them.
Lets say your next best alternative is a transload faciltiy in town. I would suspect the best you coud do transloading would be about $1,000 per car. Now you could recover the cost of the switch in about 1.5-2 years and any rebate from the railroad would be gravy. The real reason to put in the second switch is to protect your position in the market, which is at least in part the freight advantage you have by receiving direct rail.
Unless his lumber yard does a lot of business - I doubt the RR will be too keen on adding another switch. Believe me, switches cause a lot of problems. Errant TOLs due to a messed up switch can be a pain.
It does not take that long to grab an empty and slam in a new load (and that's if there is something to pull and spot every switch. Just sounds like somebody doesn't want to spend the money or effort to provide good service. Such a shame.
This is a major problem of businesses controlled by the investment community wanting to get the most out of their investment while disregarding quality and quantity of service or product. They want 80% of $100 instead of 50% of $200...the extra $20 gain costs them too much in their eyes.
Bucyrus Yes, Kneiling comes to mind. He used to say that as soon as railroads found that they could not make money on hauling something, they got out of that business. Kneiling would have advised finding a way to make money on the business rather than getting out of it.
I have Kneiling's book "Integral Train Systems" and he was a very vocal advocate for the complete elimination of loose car service in almost every form. He believed that the only non-containerized freight the railroads should handle was unit train sized amounts of bulk materials. Otherwise he wanted all freight to be intermodal and begin and finish it's journey on a trailer chassis.
He was prophetic in predicting the rise of intermodal and unit bulk train services but wrong in forecasting that it would lead to the demise of all yards, switching, local freights and merchandise trains..
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BaltACD I cannot speak to how BNSF is conducting and prioritizing their business oportunities. My carrier, many years ago took commercial actions to discourage low volume loose car customers.
I cannot speak to how BNSF is conducting and prioritizing their business oportunities. My carrier, many years ago took commercial actions to discourage low volume loose car customers.
Murphy Siding BaltACD I cannot speak to how BNSF is conducting and prioritizing their business oportunities. My carrier, many years ago took commercial actions to discourage low volume loose car customers. I understand why a Class 1 doesn't really want low volume, and thus low revenue traffic. It makes sense to me. They can make more money easier chasing bigger volume, less hassle business. Heck, we do that, everybody in business does that. I disagree with how they seem to be going about it. It seems like the beast and easiest route to go, would be to start raising the prices, until rail shipment way no longer better than truck shipment. Granted, they just may be doing this as well, and I don't know about it. On the surface, it appears that letting service decline is also being used to shoo away some less desirable traffic. That part doesn't seem like the best way to handle the situation.
Men, as a sex, do not respond well to hints. Just ask any disappointed wife, who did not get what she wanted for Christmas - despite leaving numerous 'hints'. Businesses and Railroads are nominally lead by men. The common carrier aspect of railroad commercial operations prevent railroads from 'officially' giving customers a definative statement that they DO NOT want to handle their business, limited as it is. So the only 'hints' that the carriers can give these undesired customers are raised rates and dimished service, as distasteful as those means of 'communication' are.
But the situation is broader than that. A shipper may send out 10 or more cars a day but all could be going to 10 or more different destinations. Or, the reverse, a facility might receive 10 or more cars a day but from 10 or more shipper locations. That's why there are terminal and switching charges, why there are terminal railroads, switching railroads, shortlines, and local crews. I am actually waiting for a company to be formed which will contract with a class one or whoever, to do just delivery and switching within a certain market or territory.
Henry,
What is a "terminal charge"? Please provide an example. Switching charges are exclusively for some respot type of service or for Storage In Transit service as down in Ed's country. Routine pulling and spotting are included in the rate.
You will not see some super switching entity set up to deal with carload custormers in Class One territory. The whole shortline thing of the past 20 years or so was driven by a cheap labor/union busting strategy. That has largely run its course. Class One carriers have local crews down to three men vs. five decades ago. What it makes sense to spin off has been spun off. The frequency of such deals is way, way down.
Pulling and sportting, and terminal and intermediate switching are simply part of the carload business. Always has been always will be, by definition. Since deregulation a lot of costs have been squeezed out of the carload business and the carriers have effective rate freedom. I am confident the rates are compensatory. If a particular rate was not compensatory as of 1980 you can be sure it has been either cancelled or raised.
Boone, IA is the headquarters for the Fareway Grocery chain, and they have large distribution center here. They used to receive by rail until late in the CNW era. I don't know, but imagine the volume dwindled over the years. (I didn't live in the area at that time.) It reached the point where the CNW wasn't interested in handling it anymore, even though Boone had, and still has, a daily switch engine assigned.
The way they convinced Fareway to quit rail was not to allow the switch engine time on the main track to service them. Guys working at the time said they had cars sit in the yard for close to a week, but they wouldn't let the switch engine out. Fareway took the hint and went to all truck delivery. Fareway within the last year did some remodling and added to their facility, which took out the last part of the building that still had the rail receiving dock.
There are a couple of industries that still use rail off and on in Boone. These are located on a remnant of the old Ft Dodge line. Up until a few years ago, the UP still did the switching. That trackage has been transfered to the Boone & Scenic Valley (the line goes by the county fairgrounds, which is what the B&SV wanted to be able to access.) who now does the switching. There were a few UP employees who were upset by this, mainly those that worked the yard engine itself. (Many times when the let the yard engine across the main to service the industries, they wouldn't let them back across. That would either lead to overtime or maybe an early quit, with the yard engine tied up on the other side.) I welcomed it myself, figuring if the UP kept it they would eventually "dry up" the remaining business. That could mean loss of the last yard engine trick, meaning less work for TE&Y people.
Boone still originates a 5 day a week, turn-around local. (Way freight for the CNW faithful.) The local officers try to take care of the customers on this local. They realize, as do most of us, that jobs are at stake for our terminal. This sentiment hasn't always been shared higher up in the organization, where interest is more along the lines of unit and intermodal type trains. At least that's the way it was when we were heavy with traffic, maybe their outlook has changed the last couple of years.
Probably not. I've always felt that they want the cream off the top, but don't want to milk the cow to get it.
No need to wait….(unabashed plug for my railroad here) ….
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Three current member lines, UP, BNSF and KCS.
Average of 500,000. Cars handled yearly.
No, I know there are terminal and switching roads...usually owned jointly by Class 1's. But I envision a company which will contract with a class 1 or whoever, to offer the service in markets or cities when the cost the to class 1 is out of line. Take NS, for instance. Instead of providing a local switcher and crew in ten different small city or small market locations they instead hire the switching company to provided the locomotive(s), crew(s), and supervisory support, all NS would do is drop the cars off in town; NS would still dispatch and do the paperwork. Seems to me there'd be a new business opportunity of some kind.
Sound idea, but the rub would be the contract company would have to have employees that are “qualified” under the FRA rules, GCOR or Norac, and NS or whichever Class 1 safety rules and timetable operations, because they would have to use the same main lines.
There is only so much track to use.
Which brings you back to the problem of the contract switcher being in the way of the high dollar traffic, same problem as before.
Either way, crewed by a contract company or the Class 1, you still have the track and time issue which prevents the Class 1 from switching Murphy’s company.
Unless the contract company can afford to build sidings near each of the loose car companies so they can tuck in out of the way, the unit train volume traffic will still get priority dispatching, and your back to square one.
Now, if they can figure out a time window where the major traffic is slight, they could get out there and back, most likely at a slightly less cost, but…you’re talking a pretty big dollar investment, would the return justify the expense?
But hey, at least you’re coming with ideas and trying to find solutions, beats what most folks do.
Lumber is not fine china. Containerize it.
Convert old flat cars to handle a container, with a twist. Install a greased, sideways ejection rail with an explosive charge on the flat car. There is no need for a siding. All you need is an area along the tracks that is preferably ditched to keep the container from rolling too far.
The rail crew makes a cell call about an hour away. The consignee's crane is nearby out of harm's way and ready to move. Shoot the container off the flat car. The consignee picks it up
To return the empty container, hose the dirt and grass off the outside. Remove any match sticks from the inside. The consignee is informed what day the local will be back. Call an hour away so the consignee's crane can reset the empty on the flat car.
No expensive switches are necessary. No siding is necessary. Rural secondary mains and branch lines reduce costs and gain customers.
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