Moving loose car freight efficiently

[Anonymous]

I've read the discussion on CN being the best rr in the 'world.' Everyone says it is easy for them based on the fact their system is basically a 'T'. My thoughts on other railroads such, as CSX and NS lead me to wonder if a hub and spoke approach to moving freight would help speed up freight. They have systems that when looked at resemble spider webs. Lines basically going every which way. The air freight companies do this to move freight. I realize that were talking about a different time frame. But, I think the ability to move freight faster than it does, exists. It has to. In the earlier part of the century, freight moved alot faster on rail than it does now, and there was a lot less consolidation and no computers.

[Anonymous]

Could you elaborate on what you have in mind?

I think the basic premise of saying a linear system is simpler is that you don't have to time it for multiple trains, only for the inbound train from the west and the outbound train to the east.

BNSF apparently agrees with you. They want to shed huge amounts of secondary lines and have shortlines handle them, which would make their network even more long-haul than it is now. But their computerized inventory requirements, and a slow financial market making capital and industry scarce, has significantly slowed this initiative.

[jsanchez]

I think all the railroads should work together to come up with a scheduling system for loose car freight, possibly starting with certain trunk routes and continually expanding this on all routes.
If you talk to most shippers who have dumped trains for trucks, the biggest complaint is unpredictable service, it shouldn't take two weeks to ship steel from Indiana to middle Pennsylvania(as experienced by a major rail car builder that has swithched to trucks) It is pretty pathetic when rail industry suppliers prefer to use trucks over rail, you think that would raise many red flags.
If railroads could deliver products in a more scheduled and predictable way it would bring many customers back. The other complaint I hear is railroads are a lot more difficult to deal with than truckers, one shipper felt like they were at war with a class one, I prefer not to name, needless to say they switched to a trucking company that bends over backwards to please this company. They are paying more to ship their freight, but they are getting shipments on time and in a scheduled manor, actually saving this company many.
Despite all the great things we hear about railroads in Trains Magazine the Class One's are still poorly managed, lack decent sized marketing departments, and are still stuck in their old ways of doing business, meaning poor service. I really hope what CN is doing spreads to other railroads, there are far too many trucks on the roads. If I was a class one executive I would hire as many shortline and trucking indusrty experienced people as possible to get some new ideas and real customer service. There is an unlimited amount of money railroads could bring if they would just get their act together and stop acting like railroads. The successful efforts being made to win back reefer car business, should also be applied to lumber, steel, autos, canned goods, grain, you name it. Why just focus on intermodal when car load freight brings home the bacon.

[BRAKIE]

Trucking companies bending over backwards to serve customers? Perhaps when they frist get the company,then after awhile the trucks lines can't or won't keep up with the demand...Their excuses,lack of drivers,lack of trailers and my favorite just as soon as we can get there. When they did not say.Then you load a trailer on Monday to be picked up the same or next day and 5 or 6 days later it is still sitting there.How about loads 3-7 or more days late? You always read about how bad and slow the railroads are and I see that also to be fair but nothing about trucks being late,lost or missing trailers..

Now the other side of the coin.What these companies don't tell you is most want the car or truck at the plant a day before the item is built or ready to ship nor do they tell you they wait till the last minute to ship anything.Then the whine and cry at both the railroads and trucking lines if they don't respond to their self imposed shipping problem.

Friends I work in a warehouse I am consistly being contacted by radio to see if this or that shipment has come in,if not when it shows up it is to go directly to the repacks,repacked and ship asap as the customer needs it at his store(s) for the big sale...But what they forget is there may be no trucks to pick up that "HOT" load.I will do my job,the repackers will do theirs and then gets stopped cold on the shipping dock....

[Anonymous]

For example, CSX has yards in Saginaw, Grand rapids, Flint, Lansing, Plymouth, Mi and so on. If freight out of one or any combination of yards went to a central yard say like in the Cincinatti area or some other location 8-10 hrs from the furthest city. If say a load had to go from Saginaw, Mi to Rochester, NY instead of moving the car via the most direct route via any number of trains, the load went direct to say Cincinatti, was humped into a train going to Rochester, NY directly or as part of a group yards. Air freight for example, is picked up at various airports, flowm to one central airport, off loaded, sorted, reloaded onto planes and flown to airports near where the package has to go. Now, I realize trains are somewhat slower than planes, but, the same concept can be applied to railroading as well. The boxcar is simply a larger "package". All railcars have tags on them that can be used to track them and speed up sorting. The problem with the current system, is that a load going from one city to another depending on where they are can move on any number of routes on its way to its final destination. Using the Saginaw to Rochester example, the car may travel south from Saginaw to Toledo, Oh, then be in a train from Toledo to Cleveland, then another from Cleveland to Buffalo, then from Buffalo to Rochester before being put into a local for delivery. Each time the car switches trains, it probably sits for a day or two in each yard it is resorted to another train. My example would put the car in one train from Saginaw to some "hub" yard, be sorted for the train going directly to Rochester, then put in a local for delivery.

[Anonymous]

Many large trucking outfits, and I used to work for a very large one, have things set up with customers so that much of the freight is set up for drop and hook. When I would show up at a customers dock, either the load would be preloaded or I would drop my load and pick up an empty. The customer therefore, could load or unload the trailer at his discretion. This is not all that much unlike how railroads do it. The difference is the transit time. The other factor too, is predictability. With my company, I worked briefly at one of our customers as a contract driver. I had some discussions with the shipping/receiving manager. He told me of their experiences with the railroad. They had dock space for five cars. It was a paper company. Anyway, they would have cars of paper ordered from their mills in Arkansas that would leave the mills on a regular basis, but show up at the box plant sporadically. One day, two or three cars would show up, the next day ten cars, none for a couple of days, then three. In other words no way to plan inventory based on when they needed the paper. Therefore, they used trucks to fill in the gaps, and railcars to reduce what they spent on freight charges.

[jsanchez]

That is what drives shippers nuts, is the sporadic nature of railcar shipments, it makes it very hard to run your plant efficiently, if the railroad would deliver the cars in a more consistent way, I guaranty you this company would cut out the truckers and switch more business to rail, this same scenario is all to common on shippers stuck on class ones. Shortlines seem to understand this problem better unfortunately they are held captive to the class ones lousy service, ask any shortline ownwer/manager what they think of Norfolk Southern's reliabilty and you will get an earfull of examples. Norfolk Southern should spend the money being used for fancy commercials on improving service to customers.

[Anonymous]

This seems to be what we allready have, tho. Example: Say I am a shipper in Eugene, Oregon, on the BNSF. I want to ship to Harve, Montana.

They pick up my boxcars and they take them to Pasco, Wa, in the Tri Cities area, where BNSF has their PNW hump yard. It's classified onto a block heading up the old GN, and the next day the train leaves for montana, heading for the next hub at Minot. At Minot, ND, it gets stuck on a local heading back towards Montana, and dropped.

UP has taken this to extremes. All cars headed out of the PNW to the south go to Roseville, 600+ miles away, (800-900 if you are in WA state.) It's classified at Roseville and then sent away on a long haul to the hub nearest it's destination. If Galveston, it gets stuck on a train over the Sunset to Englewood.

Cars originiating north of Roseville, bound for points north of Roseville as well, will be handled more like you are thinking, i.e., stick it on the next southbound. BUT UP and BNSF both hate these short hauls, they don't make much money for them.

Perhaps the operating practises on NS & CSX differ, but this is western SOP as of now.

One more point tho. Loose car freight is something the big boys hate. More crews, more time, less efficiency. And it always seems a load get's lost somewhere.... paperwork and internal red tape that most shortlines do without.

[oltmannd]

Some interesting thoughts. Let me add a bit.

Hub and spoke operation: RRs do sometimes operate in hub and spoke fashion. Conrail used to move auto parts with Buckeye yard as the hub. NS intermodal operates with 3 primary hubs, Atlanta, Harrisburg and Chicago. Most hump yards serve as regional hubs with line haul trains connecting the hubs. You can argue that fewer, larger hubs might reduce overall cost and network complexity, but RRs have no money available for large capital projects - they spent it all on mergers. They pretty much will have to make do with the existing infrastructure. The trick is to design an operating plan that minimizes the number of handlings and concentrates the handlings into the large, low cost, hump yards.

Car scheduling: Believe it or not, the class ones all do car scheduling on interline traffic and share the information. For example, if NS originates a carload in NJ and it is to go to CA via BNSF at Streator IL, NS will create a plan for that car and send the estimated interchange time at Streator to the BNSF. The BNSF puts this info into their car scheduling system and creates a plan all the way to placement in CA. They they send this info back to the NS. If the car gets off schedule, a revised plan is created and shared. The theory here is great, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the accuracy and coverage of car scheduling. The biggest "black hole" in the process is that the small shortlines that don't do car scheduling.

Scheduled RR operation: Much easier said than done! The problem is volume variablility by season and economic cycle. Let's assume you design a very efficient operating plan around the traffic in your peak month (typically Sept-Oct) and you can run that plan with an 80% operating ratio and every train is 100 cars. It might take you a year or more of planning to develop such a plan. Now, in January, your traffic may be off by 20% compared to the fall peak. Running your train plan with 20% less volume will drive your operating ratio up to 100%. Now, add to that an economic downturn of 10%. In Jan, every train is now 70 cars, but you need 80 just to break even. What do you do? You can't hatch a totally new plan, because that takes a year or more. What you wind up doing is tweaking your existing plan to try to squeeze some crew starts out of the plan. You also, will combine and annul trains day-by-day to try to squeeze some more cost out. This tends to sub-optimize the network and defeat the notion of a scheduled RR.

The other side of this is suppose your new scheduled train network is wildly successful and your traffic grows 20% so that now you have 120 cars when you used to have 100. If grades and siding don't allow longer, heavier trains, you now are stuck with two 60 car trains when you planned for one, 100 car one. You've doubled your cost but only increased revenue 20% - not a good deal.

Intermodal or Car Load? It's not an either/or choice. They are not mutually exclusive. The answer is "Both". They may compete for available capital, but each project has to justify it's own existance.

Even if RRs polished the speed and cosistency of car load business to a glittering shine, there is only so much traffic out there to get. CN who, does this stuff better than anyone, has shown little year of year growth in car load freight. The very nature of carload freight is that it won't grow any faster than the industrial economy - a couple percent a year - and some of that growth the RRs get almost automatically since a lot of raw material shipping isn't generally subject to diversion by truck.

Intemodal, on the other hand, is growing at nearly double digit rates. Some of this is highway diversion and some of this is based on growth in international trade. Not going after it is leaving money on the table and hurting the bottom line. Failure to do right by both car load and intermodal traffic will spell disaster for that railroads in the long run.