Originally posted by Mark_W._Hemphill Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, May 1, 2005 4:59 PM Read about the Fort Worth stockyards......Do a google search..... Once a mighty powerhouse of two major beef companies, Armour and Swift, now a ghost of the past..... The paved highway and the truck killed the livestock railroad business..... Simply economics...... Plus a huge number of smaller slaugherhouses......everywhere...... Reply Edit Bob-Fryml Member sinceMarch 2003 From: US 733 posts Posted by Bob-Fryml on Sunday, May 1, 2005 6:25 PM Well this comment isn't about cattle per se, but it's something close.... The sweetest little mixed-merchandise that regularly rolled through Cheyenne on Union Pacific was a train called the CLS (California Live Stock). With two Centennials sandwiching an SD40-2 geared for 80-mph, the train consisted of maybe a dozen cars of live hogs on the point and usually filled-out with another 30 loaded freight cars including boxcars, tanks, reefers, and a caboose. It seldom-to-never carried trailers and containers. The hogs were gathered in Nebraska, the train was built in North Platte, and the last cut of livestock to join the train - this at Cheyenne - came up from nearby Adams and Weld County, Colorado. The cars were consigned to an outfit hard by the Los Angeles River called "Farmer Brown." During football season, the Wyoming crews would refer to this livestock block as "the Nebraska Cheerleaders." You really didn't need to see the train to know that it was in town - your nose would tell you that! The livestock cars held title as being Union Pacific's first roller bearing freight equipment. Each was about 42-feet long, and they were painted Armour Yellow with silvered roof, ends, and trucks. The hogs were loaded on two or three decks. Adjustable louvers for winter weather protection was another feature; and because they carried supplies of onboard grain and water, the federal government allowed longer "hours-of-service" transit times between "feed, water, and rest cycles." I seem to recall that the cars lasted until the very early 1980s when they were replaced with a series of higher capacity 50-footers carrying, appropriately, HOGX reporting marks. Painted a shade lighter than B.N.'s "Cascade Green," these HOGX cars lasted only a very short while. The whole operation disappeared rather quickly and the cars were subsequently scrapped. The empty livestock cars returned on the LANP train, a really slow, heavy drag freight. Invariably the cars were placed immediately ahead of the caboose, a place where each conductor and flagman crew suffered an olfactory assault of biblical proportions - that's every crew except the last one (Cheyenne to North Platte). As a Nebraska conductor returning home told me one time, "Son, that ain't the smell of ***, THAT's the smell of MONEY!" Reply jockellis Member sinceMay 2002 From: Just outside Atlanta 422 posts Posted by jockellis on Sunday, May 1, 2005 6:39 PM G'day, Y'all, Fort Worth isn't a "ghost and the place, instead of being an embarkation place for steer and sheep is a destination for hogs, Harley hogs, that is." The last of the butchers moved out in 1971 but community leaders did not sit still and take their loss with a shrug. Now the place is a thriving tourist destination. You can learn a lot, as least I did, about that part of the rail industry and Americana. And, if yo do what the shops want, you can drop some serious coin on Stetsons, sumptious steaks and souveniers. Yo can also see some of the fanciest Harleys because they line the streets on the weekends while their owners converse with each other and bike fanciers. Jock Ellis Cumming, GA US of A Jock Ellis Cumming, GA US of A Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, May 1, 2005 6:58 PM I cast my eye across the USA and I survey the area between Armarillo TX, Garden City KS and over to Omaha NE. All Livestock and tons of meat plants. There are many lesser operations in the rest of the USA, but virtually everything comes out of one region. Hard Bitten Sunburnt truckers heavy on the hammer running that cattle to the slaugter from the farm is way faster than rail. Much more mobile as well. Try getting a rail car into this network and keep it productive in a timely manner. It wont happen. We must not lose sight of alot of things rail can do for the meat industry. They dont haul much cattle by rail. That is ok. What they WILL haul is feed stock, feed and grains, medicines, tools, animal fat out of there, guts going to rendering plants and other things that are important to support such a industry. You just dont have to worry about a 100 car stock train sitting in my town of 6000 people on a hot summer day stinking up the place and mooing everyone in the road while waiting on a red signal. Having said that, I am looking forward with some ancitipation at the BLI stock cars that supposedly makes animal sounds according to how you drive the train. Reply Edit Chris30 Member sinceDecember 2001 From: near Chicago 937 posts Posted by Chris30 on Sunday, May 1, 2005 7:29 PM Ok, we know that the cattle & pigs no longer move by train from, for example, Nebraska to Chicago (The Stockyards) and the slaughterhouses because of the economics and technology. We know that farms have moved away from rail and are now served by trucks that take the animals from the farm to slaughterhouses that moved away from the big cities. How much of the product that the slaughthouses produce is moved by rail these days? If trucks make the short haul from farm to slaughterhouse, then who is handling the longer haul from salughterhouse to your grocery store? Truck, or train? CC Reply greyhounds Member sinceAugust 2003 From: Antioch, IL 4,371 posts Posted by greyhounds on Sunday, May 1, 2005 7:34 PM Well, I'm going to have to disagree with Mr. Hemphill here. Two very important things were basically ignored in his post. 1) Government Regulations and, 2) Union Rules. Neither applied to trucking of livestock. Both significanltly restricted rail movement of livestock. First, there is to this day a Federal law that requires livestock moving by rail to be let out of their cars for feeding and watering every 24 hours. As an owner of racing Greyhounds, I fully support laws such as this that protect the welfare of animals in our stewardship. A cow/sheep/pig, whatever certainly deserves to get some feed and water every day. It's a crying shame that this same regulation does not apply to animals being hauled by truck. Truckers can, and do, keep loads of livestock cooped up in their trucks for days on end with no food or water. If truckers had to go find "turn out" pens to discharge the livestock for feed and water every 24 hours, they'd have less of an advantage over ther railroads in handling livestock. By law, they don't. The railroads had to provide such pens every 24 hours and that significantly disadvantaged them vis a vis truck transportation. The railroads could offer a significant advantage here. It is feasible to present feed and water to the livestock in a railcar. It is not feasible to do so in a truck because of the highway weight limits. But it doesn't matter if the cow has food and water in the railcar or not. The stupid law says "let 'em out every 24 hours" and it don't matter none if they're fat and happy or not. Second, the freight rates for livestock transportation by truck were never, ever, regulated. (It was called the "Agricultural Exemption") The truck rates could fluctuate with market . The rail rates were fixed by the Federal Government. They couldn't flucuate at all. When shipment volumes were high, the truckers could charge what the market would support. The rails could not. They had to haul the freight at below market prices. When shipment volumes were low, the truckers could cut their prices and keep their equipment utilized. The stockcars stood idle. This same rate regulation was largely responsible for the shift of perishable product, such as apples, to tuck from rail. Third, union rules prevented efficient rail movement of livestock. (The "Bull Haulers" truck drivers had no union.) The railroads had to put a full 4/5 person crew on a train. As we've seen from another thread, a truck driver would violate the laws and damage his health to get a load of hogs to where is was going. The railroads can, and should be able, to put one person on an engine with 10-12 stockcars and move the beef to where it is going. (with all due respect to the health of their employees and the law.) Fourth, there is not a diversity into small meat packing plants. There is a concentration into a very few large plants. This means that there is a opportunity to move the livestock to these plants over longer hauls. This market shift should play into the rails hands. But the railraods are not marketing companies - and it's going to take a 3rd party organization to put this together. Ken Strawbridge "By many measures, the U.S. freight rail system is the safest, most efficient and cost effective in the world." - Federal Railroad Administration, October, 2009. I'm just your average, everyday, uncivilized howling "anti-government" critic of mass government expenditures for "High Speed Rail" in the US. And I'm gosh darn proud of that. Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, May 1, 2005 9:10 PM From an econ point of view, it makes more sense to butcher cattle as close to the ranch as is economically feasable, then ship the packaged beef by refrigerated trailer or reefer railcar to the markets. You can pack more payload into a box post slaughter than live. Most cattlemen probably ship their beef to the closest slaughterhouse available, so that would fit into a mostly trucking move. Transporting live "doomed" animals long distances just doesn't make sense when you can cram the tastiest parts tightly into packages, e.g. no wasted space! Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, May 1, 2005 10:54 PM A 48 foot trailer that is cooled holds about 500 cases give or take a little bit. They get stacked pretty high in the nose and are "stepped down" the closer to the door. These are for floor loads. They are not Bulky but they are dense and heavy. I reckon about half the cubic footage is used and each case weighs on the order of 90 pounds or so. Reply Edit rich747us Member sinceJanuary 2002 124 posts Posted by rich747us on Monday, May 2, 2005 1:45 AM Even considering how meat processing plants have tended to move away from major urban areas; I've still seen and heard of places where slaughterhouses are adjacent to the railroads. For example; in Logansport, Indiana, there is a huge pork processing plant located right next to the Norfolk Southern ex-Wabash mainline (by the way, stay away from Logansport! It's a nice town, but because of the pork plant and the fact that the town is downwind of this plant, the place reeks to high heaven! LOL! ). Additionally, I'm aware that Omaha also has several slaughterhouses, and we all know what a major rail terminal Omaha is. Obviously, there are many logical reasons listed under this subject as to why live cattle is no longer transported by rail. However, I wonder why you dont see things like unit reefer trains originating from the processing plants; especially considering how much meat they probably produce. To follow on that question, I also wonder why the meat processing companies dont own their own refrigerated railcars? When there's a tie at the crossing.....YOU LOOSE! STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, AND LIVE! GOD BLESS CONRAIL!</font id="blue"> 1976-1999 (R.I.P.) Reply PNWRMNM Member sinceMay 2003 From: US 2,593 posts Posted by PNWRMNM on Monday, May 2, 2005 4:05 AM Rich, Same basic reasons as in Mark Hemphill's reply. Ask yourself where the meat is going, answer to grocery stores. How many grocery stores have rail sidings - None. To use rail, grocery chains would have to go through warehouses which adds a layer of cost and increases transit time vs truck. Time counts, as fresh meat is a perishable. This end of the business is driven by the grocers. Their whole thing is to minimize inventory stock and maximize inventory turns. That mindset drives one to truck, especially where you do not have direct rail service. Warehousing is expensive! Mac Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Monday, May 2, 2005 9:05 AM A brief comment on rail and trucks in general and not specific to cattle transport. Railroads are governed by strict operating rules mandated by government and the railroad. Speed is one rule. If an engineer exceeds the posted speed for a section of track he gan be subject to an unpaid vacation or very early retirement. We all hear stories of a train crew going "dead" 50 yards from the terminal. This is a Federal law that is obeyed by all railroads and crews and should be. Now lets look at trucks. Have you ever seen an 18 wheeler obeying the posted speed? How many times have you been traveling at the posted speed or slightly above it and have a trucker pass you up like you were standing still? How many times have you seen an 18 wheeler pulled over by the highway patrol? Very seldom. A deputy sheriff tells me that almost any truck pulled over will rack up several thousand in fines for equipment and other violations. Now I understand why the trucking industry in California (and other states) advertise extensively in the California Highway Patrol inhouse magazine. The last time I checked the CHP is not a significant user of trucks. Truckers refer to their driving log as the "cheat sheet". Have not heard of a train crew referring to their time in the same manner. We need to level the playing field. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Monday, May 2, 2005 3:24 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by wrwatkins A brief comment on rail and trucks in general and not specific to cattle transport. Railroads are governed by strict operating rules mandated by government and the railroad. Speed is one rule. If an engineer exceeds the posted speed for a section of track he gan be subject to an unpaid vacation or very early retirement. We all hear stories of a train crew going "dead" 50 yards from the terminal. This is a Federal law that is obeyed by all railroads and crews and should be. Now lets look at trucks. Have you ever seen an 18 wheeler obeying the posted speed? How many times have you been traveling at the posted speed or slightly above it and have a trucker pass you up like you were standing still? How many times have you seen an 18 wheeler pulled over by the highway patrol? Very seldom. A deputy sheriff tells me that almost any truck pulled over will rack up several thousand in fines for equipment and other violations. Now I understand why the trucking industry in California (and other states) advertise extensively in the California Highway Patrol inhouse magazine. The last time I checked the CHP is not a significant user of trucks. Truckers refer to their driving log as the "cheat sheet". Have not heard of a train crew referring to their time in the same manner. We need to level the playing field. Ok. Let's visit your playing field and make it level. Bear with me a moment here. The truck obeys the speed limit. The truck obeys the law to the letter. The truck actually does pretrips and post trips. The truck operates the engine below peak power for fuel conservation. The truck does everything necessary for safety such as following distance, slowing down in bad weather etc etc etc. That truck will require about 100 hours to make a 2400 mile trip driving time. That 100 hours DOES NOT incude lost time due to waiting for dispatcher (Who is waiting on the broker who is waiting etc etc etc) Does not include lost time driving dead head to get loaded.. Oh you have to wash out that trailer, and WAIT for it to be loaded. The meat plant has hundreds of trailers to load, your wait will be a few days. Time lost due to your rest, meals, showers, breaks, scales, shop work for flats, broken parts etc etc etc ... all eat into the "freshness" of that load. And you wonder why the driver blazes by you at speed on the road. He is under great pressure to deliver the cargo in a timely manner (Read: Right here right now! Yesterday!) You want to fix this? Fine. Slow everything down and unhook the shipper and reciever from the time constraints. Disconnect the need to deliver the cargo express, remove the stress of high speed driving. Remove the angry dispatcher (Who is ready to fire the driver) and then Remove the ANGRY Broker (Who is about ready to fire the trucking company) Remove the Grocer who will seek a meat source MUCH closer and faster than one 2000 miles away. That ground beef you look at then might have taken 10 days to get across the USA. They may not be too fresh at the store. What a waste. My solution is Teams. 24/7 Teams that can remain strong and "Clean" while running these meat loads. Another part of the solution is to speed up loading times at the plant. Your loading docks are full to the roof with trailers, your yard jockeys faint from exhaustion while herding empty trailers to and from the wash rack that is constantly running out of supplies needed to clean these trailers properly. (Food grade laws) Add to the mix 100 angry, tired, sleepy, bored and plain frusterated truckers pestering your gaurdshack security staff about thier loads... thier dispatchers calling your customer support seeking information on how fast can you get "Thier" load out the door. 100's of people around the country constantly calling your beleagured meat plant seeking thier loads to get out first right now citing any number of very good reasons why your work staff should drop everything and get this one load out now. Add that workforce to a nearby town who might be tolerating your meat plant because of the odors, dust, guts etc... Add in railroad service to the mix where you require supplies to process the meat properly. You are not running a meat plant. You are running a very large chinese fire drill operation where everything boils down to one thing: That meat load is sent to the grocer ASAP!! Pray tell, where are you going to find the extra time savings, faster cargo transit times, more efficent service and please everyone with timely fresh product all across the USA .... and..... Maritime service to and from Overseas. Where are you gonna load trucks faster when you are slaugtering upwards of hundreds of cattle per day? Your workforce can only work so fast, your chillers can only get meat cold so fast. My opinion is that the industry is working very fast. If the trucker needs to endanger others, then the police has every right to nail him (Or her for speeding) but the company should have put a "TEAM" of two drivers on that run. Singles cannot do meat runs very well from a transit time point of view. Everyone involved in the entire process of meat from the farm to the grocery store needs to participate in the best use of time. The moment the buyer hangs up the phone and a cattle truck is sent to fetch the meat from the farm... the clock is ticking. I have another thread that touches on speeding, serious cultural changes needs to be done in the industry that will result in: Cargo slowdowns Need to hire more personel (Drivers) Need to buy more trucks to keep everything on the road people to teach and help everyone involved in law enforcement to understand time issues in trucking ... etc In some ways the railroads fare much better than truckers. The railroad men understand that when the Clock runs out on the current work shift then the train is stopped. Everything they do revolves around keeping that train manned and moving. Woe to the trucker who actually "clocks out" while 80 miles from the reciever for 8 hours rest. You slow down the cargo, then you will also slow down the USA and fail to deliver product that needs to be fresh in a timely manner. Reply Edit TH&B Member sinceJuly 2003 964 posts Posted by TH&B on Monday, May 2, 2005 3:50 PM Fresh meat is not that great anyways unless you get it slaughtered illegaly right at the "family farm" anyways. ((Eat local foods as much as possible, tastes better anyways)) Meat is rattled around enough in trucks driving too fast on highways with poor pavement. Then they pump the meat with injections to make it seem juicy. Sure the price is right but the product is crap and people eat to much crap. AND the farmer is the worker that gets ripped off ! Earlier I was gonna say cattle does not belong in trains, now I see they don't belong in trucks either. Cattle should be hoofed along when transported. We are on the wrong path here, and trucking down the highway pushing the traffic is just desperation. Cattle used to be shipped by rail and boat to Europe to be processed there, what a brutal journey, it must have killed the quality of the meat. Reply mudchicken Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Denver / La Junta 10,820 posts Posted by mudchicken on Monday, May 2, 2005 6:56 PM MP173/573 (one of them) knows where Farmer John's is at (@26th & Vernon Ave in the City of Vernon, CA in the LA basin not far fro UP's Hobart Tower crossing of ATSF/BNSF. McDonalds is right across the street[dinner][dinner][dinner][dinner] Farmer John's still gets occasional shipments of porkers via UP in UP Green Livestock cars. Whatever happened to the self watering Pullman Palace livestock cars??? From experience, Rendering Plants tracks, Tallow tracks and meat processing plant tracks are to be avoided at all cost account of spillage and smell ([xx(][xx(][xx(] YECHHHH!) Mudchicken Nothing is worth taking the risk of losing a life over. Come home tonight in the same condition that you left home this morning in. Safety begins with ME.... cinscocom-west Reply jgiblin Member sinceJanuary 2002 132 posts Posted by jgiblin on Monday, May 2, 2005 8:26 PM You all seem to have forgotten to mention a small company called IBP (Iowa Beef Processors). About 45 years ago IBP discovered a simple fact of economics, that it is cheaper to slaugher meat near the point of production and then ship the final product out in boxes than to ship the entire animal to point of consumption (like Chicago) and slaughter it there. Since railroads have never been able to provide a competitive service for perishable products virtually all boxed meat products now move via truck. And for all of you rail supporters who insist on whining about the trucking industry instead of trying to understand why rail really failed here's a sobering thought. The United States of America enjoys the highest standard of living and the most productive economy in the world today. These twin benefits are built on foundation of the most efficient and productive supply chain in the world which rests squarely on a freight transportation system where trucking is the dominant domestic mode (70% share of intercity tonnage). For all its flaws and faults the trucker industry must be doing something right. Remember, if you've got it a truck brought it ! Reply jeaton Member sinceSeptember 2002 From: Rockton, IL 4,821 posts Posted by jeaton on Monday, May 2, 2005 9:42 PM Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight. To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort. Jay "We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics Reply greyhounds Member sinceAugust 2003 From: Antioch, IL 4,371 posts Posted by greyhounds on Monday, May 2, 2005 10:45 PM Well, moo to you Jay. And I'll still buy you that beer at the dog track if you've got time. But once again, I'm going to disagree with you. As a very good man named Al Watkins once said to me, "You don't make money by not hauling frieght". QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight. To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort. Jay The beef belongs on the rail. As does the pork and the poultry. I like Colorado lamb best, but I know it doesn't have the volume that the other meats do. Here's the deal. Beef production in the US has concentrated into about 26 plants that produce 70% of the US beef. Each and every American eats about 68 pounds of beef per year. That's a lot 'O beef. And it's steady. These plants are concentrated in a "Beef Mine" that extends between Amarillo and Denver. Their product moves very great distances to the populatiion centers on the East and West coasts. It's long haul, high volume, and high revenue. Custom made for a rail haul. Double stack economics could easily defeat the truck rates on these high volume lanes. It's a ripe apple ready for picking. But the railroads are not now, and never have been, "marketing companies". There's a real opportunity for a 3rd party. I can smell the money. Do you want to have that beer and talk about this (and some other things)? "By many measures, the U.S. freight rail system is the safest, most efficient and cost effective in the world." - Federal Railroad Administration, October, 2009. I'm just your average, everyday, uncivilized howling "anti-government" critic of mass government expenditures for "High Speed Rail" in the US. And I'm gosh darn proud of that. Reply jeaton Member sinceSeptember 2002 From: Rockton, IL 4,821 posts Posted by jeaton on Monday, May 2, 2005 11:03 PM Ken, Assuming you are talking about boxed meat, you might be right, but I would have to see the numbers before I would stick a buck in that venture. Won't go into the number crunching process because I'm sure you know the drill. By the way, did you know that the IC pulled out of hauling beef in TOFC service over the Iowa lines back about 1970? Different times, but the study did cover the inherent problems associated with handling that kind of business. Jay "We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics Reply Medina1128 Member sinceApril 2003 From: Clinton, MO, US 4,261 posts Posted by Medina1128 on Monday, May 2, 2005 11:10 PM If fuel costs become even more prohibitive, what's the possibility of the resurrection of rail service? Marlon See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Monday, May 2, 2005 11:32 PM I'll tell you right now that while I can imagine in my mind's eye a batch of ARMN Reefers spotted at say... Liberal Kansas and humming waiting to be loaded with beef. Let's look at Whorley's in Pittsburgh PA. I recall delivering beef there once or twice. They sit in a large multistory building deep inside downtwon Pittsburgh. Show me a rail siding anywhere near the building. Let's look at any of the walmart distribution centers. Any of these will work if only you can lay rail to them. They work the grocery and dry on one side and cooled and frozen on the other side. Everything else gets stored in the trailers until they need them. Let's look at inner city. I recall Baltimore once had stockyards for a Oscar Meyer plant (Old Swift facilities) I guess they can do alot of street running to reach this outfit by rail. But would need to connect this place first. So. There it is... rail service to these places directly to the customer is nigh impossible due to years of neglect of the "Local" shippers and recievers. Railroads will prefer to run a 100 car double stack of humming refridgerated containers to either coast than to dig thru weeds and sunken rail to get that reefer load of meat to the customer. My local grocery store depends on Associated Grocers and Sysco as well of any number of vendors. None of which are built for rail. However, all of them treat meat loads as TOP priority. I recall a Kroger's in Ft Worth Tx which is a distribution facility for local stores in that metroplex. They get thier meat out of Denver. You must have it on thier propery at Ft Worth the next morning by 9 am. 10 Am they start refusing those who are late to finish up the day's shipments to service the local stores. I dont see a easy way to rail that center. Now.. here is my idea.. Take the meat loads, load em on the train by way of intermodal boxes. Stack the boxes of say.. regional bound meat and send them down the rails towards... Baltimore. Now loads destined for Baltimore, Richmond, Harrisburg and most of everything in between can arrive at a "Inland Port" to be offloaded from the train by drivers who is working by day to get the trailer or box to the customer and get it unloaded. Theoratically this same train should recieve empty boxes and run em back to the western plant. The only problem is expediting the meat trains, naming trains dedicated to a specific region for instance the train I mentioned might be called the "Seagull East" There are many seagulls in the Chesapeake Bay. Other regions will have thier own namesake meat trains. Like the Gulf Cajun for the City of New Orleans which is also a great customer of meat. The "Regional Centers" that accept meat loads from trains, gives them to the truckers and waits for returning empties later that day probably could take a train once a week or twice a week from a plant. If you want to run faster, you need to buy more trains, build more track, etc with the same attitude of a model railroader establishing a meat packing plant on one end of the bare plywood that is his layout and building a icing station somewhere in the middle and finally a cold storage near the end close to his customers near the town or big city. If we can do this in HO on bare plywood, why cannot we do this in real world using lands that is not being used for anything? There is a lot of acreage near Hagerstown Md that is close to Baltimore, Washington and Harrisburg. All of whom needs the meat. How fast can you get this trainload out of Liberal Kansas over the tracks in the USA to Hagerstown Maryland? The only problem then should be finding the truckers to get the stuff off the train and delivered to the customers in this region. I have been wrestling with a Apple problem on the Pacific Northwest to run by train to points east of the mississippi river. There are incredible challenges facing the drivers in that region. One benefit would be not having to cross the Blue Mountains on chains at 10 mph thru 2 feet of snow into the teeth of a building winter storm. I know that for everything I wrote here probably will generate alot of very good reasons why railroads cannot, willnot or just cant afford "Door-to-door" delivery of meat products from the plant to the food store. Some of which includes schedule conflicts, friction, problems with individual loads, finding truckers to service your area *Ahem.. train Finding freight west would be a challenge and time consuming. Might as well just run them empties back straight to the plant in Liberal Kansas I used as a example. By the time your train gets there all they should need to do is wa***he cars, fuel the cars, load the meat and turn the train around back east. Apparently we have been doing this for years with containers, trailers on train and other methods with cargo throughout the USA. I also wonder if you do run trains instead of trucks out of a plant, would you run the risk of "out running" the supply of cattle in Liberal Kansas? These things need time to grow. Once you exhaust the local feedlots, strip the local farms and reach into everywhere else within a trucking day of Liberal to scrape together hoofs to ship ... everything should slow down and stop as the entire operation waits for a fresh supply of cattle. The horror is similar to allowing a Car factory in Detriot to run out of parts and have to stop the assembly line for a day or two as your truck with the vital parts race to reach it. Keep in mind I dont have any hard data to back up my theories, only what I have seen over years of hauling many different types of loads and doing way too much thinking about how to get X amount of "Widgets" there faster and safely. According to a small majority of the recievers, you are never on time. You are late and they need the product now. I wonder if the product need is driven by a financial greed that allows them to sell the stuff or use it to make items for a profit? Or these widgets are actually being used as fast as they can make it? Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 3:10 AM The specifics of livestock-by-rail have been very well covered. As a general comment, railroads over the past fifty years have sought to cut costs by concentrating on bulk commodities, largely ceding time-sensitive traffic and that which requires special handling to trucking. The exceptions are volume movements for very large shippers such as motor vehicle mfrs and UPS. Factors which could potentially shift significant quantities of freight back to the rails are largely external to the industry, and include large and permanent increases in fuel prices, highway capacity constraints and driver shortage; that last one is already having some effect. Reply Edit rich747us Member sinceJanuary 2002 124 posts Posted by rich747us on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 4:01 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Well, moo to you Jay. And I'll still buy you that beer at the dog track if you've got time. But once again, I'm going to disagree with you. As a very good man named Al Watkins once said to me, "You don't make money by not hauling frieght". QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight. To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort. Jay The beef belongs on the rail. As does the pork and the poultry. I like Colorado lamb best, but I know it doesn't have the volume that the other meats do. Here's the deal. Beef production in the US has concentrated into about 26 plants that produce 70% of the US beef. Each and every American eats about 68 pounds of beef per year. That's a lot 'O beef. And it's steady. These plants are concentrated in a "Beef Mine" that extends between Amarillo and Denver. Their product moves very great distances to the populatiion centers on the East and West coasts. It's long haul, high volume, and high revenue. Custom made for a rail haul. Double stack economics could easily defeat the truck rates on these high volume lanes. It's a ripe apple ready for picking. But the railroads are not now, and never have been, "marketing companies". There's a real opportunity for a 3rd party. I can smell the money. Do you want to have that beer and talk about this (and some other things)? Thanks for mentioning this fact. A good arguement for the concept of starting "hotshot" reefer trains from the midwest processing plants to the major population centers. If they can get those trains to run a favorable schedule, they could easily give trucks a run for their money based on how much more cargo a train can haul. Reefer cars can be sent directly to a major city, or spotted at transload depots in smaller cities. In either case, the meat can be quickly transfered to trucks to be shipped to the grocery stores. Admitedly, my idea is probably all just whishful thinking, lol. But hey, the hypothetical notion of trying to find and videotape/photograph a train consisting of nothing but IBP or ConAgra reefer cars (which I also know do not exist) would make for an interesting find on a railfan trip. It would be somewhat of a railfan novelty. Much like that of the Tropicana Juice train. [:)] When there's a tie at the crossing.....YOU LOOSE! STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, AND LIVE! GOD BLESS CONRAIL!</font id="blue"> 1976-1999 (R.I.P.) Reply kjuice Member sinceApril 2004 5 posts Posted by kjuice on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 7:42 AM from what i can tell, CPR is still transporting cattle in rail cars here. Usually around 2 am I can hear them in the rail yard. Though I have not gone down to confirm this, I can't see anyplace else they would be comming from. Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 8:13 AM Swift and Armour started this whole thing when they built their first processing plants in Chicago. Livetsock came in by rail, got slaughtered, and sides of beef went east by rail in Swift-owned refers. At first, this practice wasn't accepted, as butchers and consumers wanted fresh meat, so Swift started up a series of wholesalers in smaller eastern cities. In the larger cities these wholesalers operated out of the central city food markets. This worked until the western population started to expand, then the business went regional(Omaha, IBP, etc.). The wholsale markets still exist and restaurants and smaller independent butchers still deal with them, but the large grocery chains are able to deal direct with the packing houses and have their own distribution centers. From these centers, a lot more than just meat goes out to the stores by truck. Also, it's doubtful a small local butcher would be interested in frozen packaged meat, but the chains seem to be selling more and more of it. Reply Edit 12 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. 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QUOTE: Originally posted by wrwatkins A brief comment on rail and trucks in general and not specific to cattle transport. Railroads are governed by strict operating rules mandated by government and the railroad. Speed is one rule. If an engineer exceeds the posted speed for a section of track he gan be subject to an unpaid vacation or very early retirement. We all hear stories of a train crew going "dead" 50 yards from the terminal. This is a Federal law that is obeyed by all railroads and crews and should be. Now lets look at trucks. Have you ever seen an 18 wheeler obeying the posted speed? How many times have you been traveling at the posted speed or slightly above it and have a trucker pass you up like you were standing still? How many times have you seen an 18 wheeler pulled over by the highway patrol? Very seldom. A deputy sheriff tells me that almost any truck pulled over will rack up several thousand in fines for equipment and other violations. Now I understand why the trucking industry in California (and other states) advertise extensively in the California Highway Patrol inhouse magazine. The last time I checked the CHP is not a significant user of trucks. Truckers refer to their driving log as the "cheat sheet". Have not heard of a train crew referring to their time in the same manner. We need to level the playing field.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight. To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort. Jay
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QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Well, moo to you Jay. And I'll still buy you that beer at the dog track if you've got time. But once again, I'm going to disagree with you. As a very good man named Al Watkins once said to me, "You don't make money by not hauling frieght". QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight. To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort. Jay The beef belongs on the rail. As does the pork and the poultry. I like Colorado lamb best, but I know it doesn't have the volume that the other meats do. Here's the deal. Beef production in the US has concentrated into about 26 plants that produce 70% of the US beef. Each and every American eats about 68 pounds of beef per year. That's a lot 'O beef. And it's steady. These plants are concentrated in a "Beef Mine" that extends between Amarillo and Denver. Their product moves very great distances to the populatiion centers on the East and West coasts. It's long haul, high volume, and high revenue. Custom made for a rail haul. Double stack economics could easily defeat the truck rates on these high volume lanes. It's a ripe apple ready for picking. But the railroads are not now, and never have been, "marketing companies". There's a real opportunity for a 3rd party. I can smell the money. Do you want to have that beer and talk about this (and some other things)?
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