QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan Probably because it takes so darn long to get everything ready at the port, sooner the better for an inbound to get there so they can get all the cards on the table. If the ports could get more docks and workers to sort out the containers, speedy container trains would make more sense. Even if they could get the container from the vessel to the train instantaneously, I don't think my premise would change. The ocean liner does, at best 15 knots, over an incredible vast distance and sometimes have to wait outside the port for a bearth for a very long time. 5-7 hours compared to this time is NOTHING. Gabe Don't the container ships run on schedules?
QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan Probably because it takes so darn long to get everything ready at the port, sooner the better for an inbound to get there so they can get all the cards on the table. If the ports could get more docks and workers to sort out the containers, speedy container trains would make more sense. Even if they could get the container from the vessel to the train instantaneously, I don't think my premise would change. The ocean liner does, at best 15 knots, over an incredible vast distance and sometimes have to wait outside the port for a bearth for a very long time. 5-7 hours compared to this time is NOTHING. Gabe
QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan Probably because it takes so darn long to get everything ready at the port, sooner the better for an inbound to get there so they can get all the cards on the table. If the ports could get more docks and workers to sort out the containers, speedy container trains would make more sense.
QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe Why don't they do this with all trains then? Box cars, lumber carriers, and auto carriers would seem to cost more than a container. Also, with higer speed trains, wouldn't that require more engines, which would also cut into the efficiency created by turn around time? P.S. Greyhounds once talked about Chicago - St. Louis intermodal opperations. In so doing, you implied there was more than one train a day in each direction. Was this the case? I am just curious as an IC fan.
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QUOTE: Originally posted by adrianspeeder I would say that the ship can carry so much more containers vs. a train. I bet that the tonnage moved x speed for a ship is much higher than a train. Adrianspeeder
Originally posted by gabe Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 11:42 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by adrianspeeder No, I think the train would need to move as fast as possible to keep up with the massive amounts of containers coming from ships. Adrianspeeder If you look at a shipping port's news paper, such as Baltimore. You may find a section where there is arrivals and departures of ships that day, previous day and the day after. ALOT of boxes off the ships go by truck direct to the customer. I have stood in the middle of the port at Baltimore when Evergreen is unloading and see a few hundred boxes disappear into the port. Later that day hundreds of truckers leave with those boxes. Trains are used to carry boxes from the east coast to the west coast to save shipping the lost time traveling all around the southern USA, pananma canal etc... I see about 8-12 Double stack trains running north to St. Louis from Little Rock a day. I would think that is one ship's worth of boxes right there. Dont worry, there are MANY trains. And few ships. And millions of truckers. Reply Edit Murphy Siding Member sinceMay 2005 From: S.E. South Dakota 13,569 posts Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:16 PM By the same reasoning, are the shipping companies pressured to run their ships faster? For example, do they offer "premium" service, for a ship that travels 17 knots vs. 15 knots? Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar. Reply gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:26 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding By the same reasoning, are the shipping companies pressured to run their ships faster? For example, do they offer "premium" service, for a ship that travels 17 knots vs. 15 knots? I am very much a novice when it comes to the shipping industry, but I would really have to think not. Here are my reasons: (1) Due to the geometric preasures created by a prop. driven steamship, the amount of fuel and wear on an engine increases geometrically rather than arethetically. In other words, it takes more than twice the horse power to travel at 30 knots instead of 15. If you look at the power plants in battlecruisers or fast battleships, you will notice that the shp of a fast battleship is noticeably higher than that of the same size ship that only goes 11 knots slower. For instance the Iowa class battleship has an incredible 212,000 shp, where as the Arkansas class--though some 15,000 tons lighter has an shp in the upper 50,000s. The Iowans do about 33 knots, the Arkansas do about 20 (on a good day). (2) The clear trend in shipping seems to be the economy of scale rather than speed. But, that is just a novice shooting from the hip. Good quesiton. Gabe Reply StillGrande Member sinceSeptember 2003 From: Alexandria, VA 847 posts Posted by StillGrande on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:34 PM Regarding ships, aren't the SS companies always looking for bigger and FASTER. I remember a show on PBS where there was a group looking to build a RO/RO ship which would cut days off the transit times using a different engine arrangement (engine pods) which would also speed up docking and departure (fewer or no tugboat intervention). Industry has greatly reduced the need for warehouses using Just in Time delivery of parts (the auto industry comes to mind). A few hours difference can now mean the difference between staying in production and shutting down for the day. Dewey "Facts are meaningless; you can use facts to prove anything that is even remotely true! Facts, schmacks!" - Homer Simpson "The problem is there are so many stupid people and nothing eats them." Reply Murphy Siding Member sinceMay 2005 From: S.E. South Dakota 13,569 posts Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:37 PM Then, using that line of thought, why do steamship companies run intermodal so fast? [:D] Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar. Reply spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:39 PM In my time NO[:o)][:p] Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:53 PM Also, it is the steamship line who controls the routing to say Chic or NY or Savannah as they are ones that choose the RR & routing they will use & will put in the contract with the RRs how many days they have to get the container from say LAX to CHIC. To attract the consignee they advertise to the consignee say from Tokyo to Chicago will take 13 days or Hong Kong/NYC 18 days just to give you a example. If the SS line does not perform upto what they advertise they become in jeopardy to lose there customer. Again I suggest you contact any of the major pacific carriers & analyze how they attract consignees & perform the transit time to destination they promised to the consignee[:p] Originally posted by gabe [ Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 2:51 PM Whew... let's take in some slack here... I see mega widget INC in middle USA somewhere taking in parts from China. They will call thier agent in some trade tower somewhere. That agent decides how the shipment will get from China to the customer. I think it costs x number of dollars to place the containers on a shipping line. And another x number of dollars for either trucking or train (Or both if inland container ports are used) The cheapest method gets the call. Regarding ship speeds, I study military history as a rank ametuar who knows nothing about that subject. Our Merchant Marine did pretty well at 15 knots during world war two. But 24 knots is more beneficial in cutting transit times. To get 30 knots on a warship is a special problem requiring massive engineering on a huge scale. Lucky for us we can drive carriers at speeds that are perhaps over 40 knots. No one will clarify the top speed as it is useful to the enemy in deciding how long before we confront him with a carrier battle group that is capable of displacing 1000 miles or more each 24 hours. Cargo ships have a different impact on the ocean and different problems than a warship and it will take a bit of power to get them to "Get up and run" I believe there were ships built that are capable of very high speeds but commerically did not really take effect. Take the cruise lines. We are building and deploying cruise ships larger than the Nimitz Class Carriers and capable of transporting thousands of people in luxury that would make Cunard or White Star of the Titanic days envious. Not to mention the sheer profit in having so much paying cargo on board. These cruise ships have the technology so that ONE man on the bridge can park it within 1 meter of the dock in the tightest of places such as Miami without assistance of tugs. He would use a variety of GPS sensors and a single joystick to do the task. But I am getting away from the cargo here. I think it benefits shipping to carry a massive load of cargo any distance. I dont think 15 knots or 24 knots really matter much. If we had 50 knot cargo ships, the goods will cost more and people will be more stressed getting the greater volume of goods thru the ports which appear to be pretty busy already. The topic of this thread is why are customers SO demanding of getting thier goods delievered ASAP!! as in within hours of a ship's arrival.. Never mind the fact that box sat on the ship for 30 days as it floated across the ocean. The answer I think lies within us as a people. Example.. You order a Model Locomotive of your dreams. You are told it will take a few weeks. Each day you wait on that order you wonder if they shipped it yet but not really concerned. The day you are notified that the order has shipped and on it's way to you... you WILL find yourself camping at the end of your mailbox waiting for UPS, Fed Ex or whatever to get the package to you ASAP! You might sneak home from work early to see if it hit your porch yet. I think this also infects customers who expect thier freight yesterday. I had one onion load from Seattle to the Boston Market. It took me 4 days as a single driver to make it in the dead of winter with ice and big snow in the north. The owner of the onions shouted in my ear... YOU ARE TOO (Insert degradatory word) SLOW!! I could have (Insert different option) gotten them onions here faster. I suspect you can load 44,000 pounds of onions on AIR CARGO and landed the darn thing 8 hours later on his market stall and he will STILL yell about how slow you were. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Friday, June 17, 2005 3:56 PM I still think you would get a funny look from any rational exec if you told him or her "if you pay x MORE dollars, I will be able to get you your product in 30 days and 4 hours instead of 30 days and 11 hours. Gabe Reply BaltACD Member sinceMay 2003 From: US 25,289 posts Posted by BaltACD on Friday, June 17, 2005 4:49 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Then, using that line of thought, why do steamship companies run intermodal so fast? [:D] Competition....on the major trade routes there are more than one carrier....If carrier A offers 7 day transit and carrier B offers 10 day transit who is going to get the business???? Never too old to have a happy childhood! Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 10:10 PM Try it this way: The new containerships carry 4,000 FEU's. The typical double stack carries 250 FEU's. That's 16 trainsets per ship. Now calculate how many ships call at your port of choice. Say it's 500 per year on average. To serve those 500 ships at 4,000 FEU's per ship takes 8000 trainsets per year. So now you ask yourself how many trainsets do I want to buy to meet that 8000 trainset demand. If my trainsets can make the turn-around in 10 days or so, I can make do with about 36 trips per trainset per year. That's a little over 9,000 containers per trainset per year, so I would need to invest in about 218 trainsets. If however my turn-around time is 15 days per trainset, I get only 24 trips per trainset per year or a little over 6,000 containers per trainset per year, so then I would need to invest in about 333 trainsets, e.g. my equipment costs just went up 50% because my double stacks move 20 mph slower than they are able. You still want to know why intermodal moves at the fastest allowable freight speed? Time is money. Reply Edit greyhounds Member sinceAugust 2003 From: Antioch, IL 4,371 posts Posted by greyhounds on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:10 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe Greyhounds, That was really interesting about the IC line. Do you know if the service was always run over the Alton? The IC's old St. Louis service, took the IC New Orleans main to Gilman, Il, to Springfield, and then South on a more Easterly tact than the Alton. This line went through my hometown of Mt. Olive. I have always wondered about the freight operations on this line--I have been told a lot of the IC freight went to Duqoin and then took the IC's Southern extension into St. Louis. I never quite understood why they would do this. One of my earlliest memories as a 6 year old is watching the IC tear the line out from Farmersville to Glen Carbon. It was nice seeing the traffic come through town, as they stopped running freight over the line for a few years prior, but when they started attaching chains to the engines and using them to pull out the rails, I was less amused I am surprised my young psyche ever survived. Ever since then, the IC has held a certain mystique to me. Gabe IIRC, and it's been a while.... The ICG functioned as a bridge line for carload auto parts from Michigan to the now deceased west coast auto assembly plants. These plants were primarily served by the SP. We'd receive trains from the GTW and C&O at Markham and assemble them for delivery to the SSW at East St. Louis. The interchange to the Cotton Belt was easier from the old IC facilities than the old GM&O facilities in ESTL. So the trains went through DuQuoin to use the old IC yard in ESTL and facilitate the interchange. One of the first things I did at the railroad was help set up a Markham - Pine Bluff run through train. It worked fine until the SP started to steal our power. We'd given 'em a train with three good SD-40s. They'd give us back a train with no power. We were loosing three locomotives a day. We had to shut it down. Just park the train without power in E. St. Louis and tell 'em it was there. They got it moved as best they could. In the mean time, our SD-40s were charging around Texas or wherever. They were the crappiest railroad I knew. And when you consider a customer once told me the L&N "hadn't figured out what they did for a living yet", that was saying something. I also worked on the abandonment of that old IC line. We just didn't need two lines between Springfield and St. Louis. Getting back to intermodal, where I spent most of my time...I'll tell you an L&N stupid story. Both the ICG and L&N served Chicago-New Orleans. For years, New Orleans was overbalanced inbound. We had more loads in than out. So we had to drag empty trailers northbound with no revenue. This is unused capacity. We worked to find loads for the northbound movements. We did it. We developed enough business northbound that we ran New Orleans dry of empty equipment. We had customers calling for equipment that we couldn't provide. Our New Orleans terminal manager solved the problem. He called the L&N and asked for their empty equipment. And they were dumb enough to give it to him. I would just sit there and think how *** dumb they were. They would have at least gotten some of those loads if they hadn't given us the equipment we asked for. But they just kept giving it to us. We'd take it under revenue load up to Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville (all competive points with the L&N) and reload it back south. If they give it to you, take it. Don't ever just assume the other guy knows what he's doing. "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 spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Saturday, June 18, 2005 6:35 AM Yes if Gabe has not yet done it he should secure some major Pacific SS lines schedules & analyze them. Then I am sure he will understand far more about international traffic then he does now. [:o)][:p] Originally posted by BaltACD Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:25 AM A long reply, which may ask more questions than it answers[8)]. [:)][:)][:)] Gabe, you asked several challenging questions in your original posting, with more to follow. I do perceive a lack of “core” questions that might have been addressed by others prior to in-depth discussion of turbinage, demurrage, etc. I am certainly grateful for the many, many intelligent and informed answers and comments you received; therefore so please don't think I'm being patronizing if I play this a little bit along the “For Dummies [like me!] approach….. ”The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities.” I agree with everyone about the basic trade-off between speed and cost (which, in RRing, often stems from the trade-off between speed and TORQUE.). Coal is a great example of the freight that's not in a hurry. If you can put it on something slick (the Mississippi River, the Teneessee-Tombigbee Waterway) that actually is moving the way you want it to go, then that's about the cheapest of all. Don't look for barges to disappear anytime soon; in fact, barge-makers’ stock has begun going up. Second cheap, of course, is dragging it over water—such as exporting coal down the aforementioned waterways to South America (Or maybe I’m just worked up over those soft-core coal-mining vixen in the GE commercial!) It sounds simple, but it is very high-tech, and along with economies of scale the more high-tech it is, the cheaper. Think of the scene with Marlon Brando unloading bananas in the movie “On the Waterfront” and how that might proceed today. Much less labor-intensive! And, I am compelled to say that other than air, the most expensive is to consolidate it (COFC, TOFC) and put it on something man-made but low in friction: a semi trailer, a scheduled intermodal run. I think everyone's right in that higher fuel costs hurt everyone, but turn out to be a comparative advantage for the RR's over individual or individual-under-contract long-haul truckers. (There was a fascinating article about five weeks ago in THE NEW YORKER about two guys' deadheading fresh, live lobsters from Nova Scotia to UPS' mega-facilities in Memphis, which will now keep the crustaceans alive until their customers call for them. The article is as much about how the shipper becomes the de facto wholesaler as much as it was about two truck drivers avoiding I-81. This makes a point about service bundled into transportation, which I will return later.) If I may give fle***o your concern about the inefficient time lag between China and store shelves, why would, say, Wal-Mart need weeks or months ago (probably weeks) to get its action-figures cued to the new "Star Wars" movie on a slow boat from China and then a moderately expensive drag from Long Beach or wherever to Proviso or wherever then Albany or wherever. I apologize if I missed something, but I didn’t see people making hay out of the fact that these days, the super carriers of goods or petroleum are HUGE--too big for the Panama Canal. So sending out a couple of ships that are merely medium-large to transit the Canal would be inefficient, and much worse would be sending out one of those new whoppers and then intermodal'ing the goods twice across the Isthmus to another waiting super carrier. [Trivia Note: The Genessee-Wyoming owns the Panama Canal Railroad.] So, let’s say I'm Wal-Mart and I want my zillions of cases of Obi-Wan Kenobi figurines to the USA. Even if it were cheaper (and it isn't) to go round either Cape than use a slow boat from China, I suspect reliability is the norm. Nor is it a matter of air-freight being cost-effective when shipping light but small like Obi-Wan figures (up in the air, weight still counts a lot, as well as space.) Wal-Mart will plead that masses of figurines meet “consumer demand,” but try demanding that Wal-Mart ship via DHL the right kind of Obi-Wan for my niece. I wouldn’t think of it; but it isn’t because the doll is no longer profitable. It would be, but not as much as it is now when Wal-Mart has established itself as more than a dominant force but a market-maker Note that store leaders get little if any advance word on what’s coming into the store and have less than no input about what they’d like to see on their own shelves.. Now that twenty-dollar GE iron, also from China. No, nobody’s about to air-freight that ‘cause heavy still matters in air freight and irons – well, they’re heavy as irons (;)[:p]. If it were a new steam-release valve for your new $175 Krups steam iron, it might get air-freighted from New Jersey or Germany or the Far East. Gabe, I didn't think of this until you challenged us re logistics but shipping deadlines, like transportation boxes themselves, can have different "modes." Wal-Mart is in no hurry for the Star-Wars figurines because they started chatting with George. Lucas and friends a good three years ago. Two years ago people (frequently now abroad) were designing them, then W-M bargained with Kenner or Mattel or whomever for specs and product launch (not for nothing do our nation’s largest corporations have big shiny regional hdqtrs as close as possible to Wal-Mart hdqtrs in Bentonville, AR, and the process is more integrated than I’ve made it seen.) Finally, W-M has probably already dealt with the shippers (BNSF, UP, CN) or expediters/logicians (Pacer International, Inc.) a LONG time ago--maybe as much as a year or more. (Point to ponder: does Wal-Mart draw up its own cost-of-fuel contracts to counter the RR lines’ guarantee-of-escalator contracts? Crazy if they don’t.) So a fuel-efficient super carrier takes ten days to a fortnight instead of a week. Who gives a doodle? Wal-Mart’s got the exclusive on Obi-Wan and Barbie, so there’s nobody out there to sneak-release them first. So the Guangzhou-to-Shanghai Railroad is going to triple its track, reducing from 3 days to one the time it takes to traverse the entire main line? Big whoop! (But it will matter for average carless Chinese who will see their trains jump from a 1910s level of speed and comfort to a 1950s.) Also, that extra day or two may come in mighty handy, especially if there’s a typhoon or hurricane to be dodged. Perhaps our shipping mavens will speak to that. So with a combination of reliability, planning and bargaining for the most efficient and cheapest routing, those Obi-Wan Kenobis and Barbies and that wonderful $20 GE iron, all from China with their pennies-on-the-dollar-and-you'd-better-like-it labor, at Wal-Mart, can be so INCREDIBLY cheap! My hunch is that Wal-Mart, after hitching their wagon many years ago to Messrs. Lucas and colleagues, operates on fairly pessimistic supply-and-transportation paradigms, because the figurines, much to this Uncle's consternation, always seem to wind up in the stores about five weeks ahead of the movie premier. So why doesn't Wal-Mart hold the items at its (global) intake facilities or ports, or at its (regional) warehouses? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. And that's the mixed blessing of "just-in-time" inventory. Nothing can sit still! (Canadian National's 2004 report very cleverly has as its cover photograph an empty rail yard, and inside the caption explains that all CN's motive power and rolling stock are out there earning money, not idling away at the yard.) So that’s the devil in the details: if the stuff is punctual and not damaged (however slow) that’s fine, as long as it’s punctual. Punctuality counts too, once the goods enter Wal-Mart’s custody. But for slightly different reasons: not only is at (1) too “hot” an inventory environment these days to cool things by lying around US warehouses or pay demurrage or whatever; but (2) whenever Obi-Wan shows up, even if it’s five weeks early, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will do its best (sans heroics) to make sure that the figurines in Portland, OR don’t arrive that much earlier than those destined for Portland, ME. So slow-boat from China is one mode, and TOFC, stacks or daredevil trucking teams are another shipping urgency—one of the concepts of intermodality is, in fact, that things like schedules that seem counterintuitive on the surface really aren’t once an understanding is reached that ASAP is good for some situations and not others, and it almost always costs more. Let’s not assign morality to transportation: It isn’t the least bit “hypocritical” to take ultra-slow crossing of the Pacific with medium-to-very fast ground shipping here at home. It’s the consolidated results that matter; as I keep stressing reliability as well as a coherent cost. Perhaps instead of asking “Why is intermodal so fast” you might have asked, “Why can’t everything be as fast, ASAP?” Which gets me to unit trains. Gabe, I don’t think your idea of speeding up unit trains is a great one, for reasons that have been touched on as well as a couple of new ones. First, in the eternal struggle between torque and speed, “patient” coal or iron filings or gardener’s stone (but mostly coal), it’s best to sacrifice speed for torque. And that’s why the unit coal trains I see in Rochelle, Ill., headed for places like Wisconsin Power are pulled by a two or three frequently begrimed and old (probably all-DC) units, with perhaps a pusher on the end. A power plant is a great example about a service/industry that doesn’t have to worry too much (barring strikes, fuel shortages, inflation!) about what it needs—it needs the specified coal, it needs to be absolutely sure enough is on hand at all time, and (a luxury in today’s just-in-time era) it probably has a pile or two of “patient” coal out back (again coal supplies, unlike Omaha Steaks or Obi-Wan, don’t mind getting dumped on the ground and even snowed on a little). So, for a coal unit train the operating rate of speed has a lot to do with money, and possibly also a lot to do with local politics. According to figures (a couple of years old, I admit) from the DM&E, it takes two and-a-half minutes for 120 cars of an empty unit train to pass by a crossing at 40-45 mph. Make that 150 cars of laden coal train with a speed below 35 – it may be the cheapest in terms of fuel to go at 20 but a third more cars and almost two-thirds less speed is simply unacceptable. Even a third more cars and only a third less speed (35 mph) is pretty wearing. Studies have shown that citizens are OK about waiting for a slow train at a grade crossing for up to that 2.5 minutes, but at about three (all of 30 sec. later) they start getting antsy and they REALLY heat up after four! For more background, Google for “DM&E,” “Schieffer” “unit trains” and “Rochester, Minnesota.” I suppose with today’s huge, usually hump-free and LONG logistics centers, the Class One’s could probably marshal up 200-car unit trains. Bad idea! Even if three weekly dumps at that Wisconsin power plant would equal the tonnage of five Mon-Fri 120-yard trains, consider that: (1) incremental savings would be slight; (2) the electric co. likes to hear the reassuring thunder of coal every working day; and (3) most of all, it would be totally unacceptable to folks in places like Rochester, MN and smaller communities like Rochelle, IL, where grade crossings are the norm. Moral: for unit trains don’t think “wayward shuttle,” think “Berlin Airlift.” And, with today’s longer sidings, several coal trains in motion will not “clog” the system. Thank modern CTC. I think the people who spoke before me are using their transportation expertise and common sense and rightly judged consumer goods to be in an intermediate position of urgency between unit train and UPS. UPS intrigues me. Lots and lots of TOFC with the UPS label pounds over that double diamond at Rochelle, Illinois, mostly BNSF but some UP; and once in a while, when such trains are running slower than their usual 50-ish mph, I can hear machinery humming and see fans whirling in some of the UPS trailers. Is it a ventilator? Or is it even possible for generator/alternator to summon up enough power to run refrigerated or frozen? (I’m not talking about fridge cars, mind.) For that matter, when I have Amazon books shipped at their cheapest level of delivery, that usually involves separate shipments, all of which I could track out of Seattle or northern Nevada (near Reno, I think); and the same for my Tampa cigars that routed through Jacksonville, FL, then Lexington, KY, then Dolton, IL (south suburban Chicago). For the most part, I no longer can; instead I receive a cold but correct computer message to the effect that “You’re not a corporate shipper so all we’re going to tell you now is that your order is scheduled to get to you on time.” Could UP be marshalling up parcel trains at Global III to head into Chicago? Or BNSF sending their stuff—it’s quite possible—all the way downtown in Chicago to that huge UPS hub? The stuff is frequently late (but it was frequently late when it checked into Chicagoland at Dolton, having come up the Interstates by their trucks). Could it be that some company like Pacer, International is routing the stuff by rail? (Interesting company; I have their 2004 Annual Report in hand. Made a ton of money last year, and, if “non-asset-based” means what I think it does, they don’t even own most of those pretty blue Pacer/Stacktrain mods.) Perhaps the transport pros would like to speak of the phenomena of service companies like Pacer (again with the service!). The chain of supply under "just-in-time" regimes may indeed be too tight. On the other hand, new technologies have brought new cost efficiencies to shippers. This is Rochelle scuttlebutt, but it's probably true: the local farmers can get a dime more a bushel for their corn (a not inconsiderable amount) if they bring it straight to the railhead itself and not to the local elevator! Ah, a new kind of service--or even if it's foregoing service, there's a calculable saving! Oh brave new world...[:0] In closing, who among our ocean-transportation experts can recommend the biggest trans-Pacific companies? I have an A.R. from Alexander & Baldwin, but doubt that that is anywhere near the biggest carrier, except possibly to Hawaii. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:10 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous. a). Because the ocean going liners don't have to compete with trucks? A "slow boat from china" is still a slow boat from china ...no matter who pilots it. Whereas once the containers hit terra firma the green flag falls b). Volume: if you are a merchant expecting 20 containers full of merchandise, you probably have very little control on selecting one overseas container company over the other, IN THE CONTEXT OF SPEED, and as such a small customer you are not going to be able to command priority routing from the ship. However, once the containers are on land, you can barter with the devil all you want as far as who is willing to promise you what, with those contending forced to butt heads on details. and. c). timing... Perhaps after HAVING to wait for that slow boat from china to make it's 30 day transit...the welled up anticipation of customers waiting for their goods makes that last 4 hour differential transit time all the more critical? If you've been forced to wait for your order for 30 days already, which is better to the impatient mentality? waiting 1 day longer or 2 days longer to take delivery. You put the pressure on the point you can actually control... Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:14 PM Good points all, Mr. AntiGates. As an individual, I would get very antsy waiting -- is it really close to a month? -- for goods to cross the Pacific. As a cold (or at least value-neutral) institution like Wal-Mart (or Target, or Home Depot, Menard's, etc.), I'm not sure my employees would individually get close enough to large-scale freight movement to really impose a time-frame on and worry or care much about any particular movement--with obvious exceptions, of course, like buyers who have had to keep their own special info about CD's and toys, etc., to themselves for the good of the company. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:22 PM Antigates, I am not saying your wrong. I am way to ignorant on this subject to make such a bombastic statement. However, it just seems to me that you are missing my premise. I know what you are saying about steamships not having to compete with truckers. But, what I am saying, is that is an irrelevant red herring. Futuremodal, Greyhounds, Oltmand, MP173, and others have given me good explanations that, at the very least, shed light on my conundrum. However, I still stick to my initial premise that--absent some of the other reasons referenced above--truck competition with steamships vel non, it makes absolutely no sense to me to pay a dollar more for freight to have it arive in one month and 4 hours instead of one month and 11 hours. It seems irrelevant to me that steamships aren't competing with trucks, all that really matters is the infintesible difference reflected in the bottom line. Gabe Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:42 PM Gabe: What if the real difference between one month and 4 hours vs one month and 11 hours is an arrival time of 6 AM for the former vs 1 PM for the latter? Makes a big difference if the former allows stock to be placed on shelves while the latter makes you wait one day. In this case, the difference of 7 hours turns into a difference of 24 hours. In reality, except for the short haul lanes, the 20 mph max speed difference in your original example tends to translate into days, not just hours, for the longer haul corridors. Statistically speaking, the more expediently you get on down the road will lessen the likelyhood of delays such as crews going dead before the next crew change, having to go in the hole for UPS-TOFC, etc. It was stated best when it was stated, "Why does everything else have to move so slow?". Reply Edit Jack_S Member sinceDecember 2004 339 posts Posted by Jack_S on Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:02 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe One point to be looked at is the number of containers that pass a given point in one time interval. Yes, ships are slow but they carry a incredible number of containers compared to a train. And they are moving 24/7. So they carry a larger number past any given waypoint than a train can even at a higher speed. The big problem is not to go fast, it is to prevent going very slow or stopping. In that the ports are the big obstacle. But the basic reason the RRs run that fast is simply that some customers will pay more if they do. The customers have a time problem: they perceive a market for something and order it. If it takes too long to get the goods to the stores, the fickle market may disappear and they will be left holding the bag. So they are willing to pay extra to reduce shipping time even by a matter of a few days. Jack Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:32 AM **Ahem.. customers expecting freight of whatever kind are usually on THIER own schedule. For example.. Kroger foods wants your meat load delivered onto their dock by 11 AM in some locations so they can ship that evening. If you dont make that 11 AM cut off, you are likely to lose that day, the next day and have to catch up with trying to find a load once you did get empty. Ships want trucks and trains to take thier burden off. I sometimes wonder how many HO Scale Precision Craft Models are on the way across the Pacific as we type this thread? Reply Edit edblysard Member sinceMarch 2002 9,265 posts Posted by edblysard on Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:42 AM Well, Answer a question with a question... Why, after such a long and time comsuming trip, would they be in such a hurry to unload the ship after it docks? After all, it took forever to get here, right? Because they have to turn the ship back, and head out to get more containers... Why run a container train so fast? Because, the number of cars available to move the containers is limited, and less than the number of containers needing to move, there are more containers on the way, in a continious loop... How long the containers take to arive at the port is irrelevent to the railroad, the fact that there will alway be more, arriving hourly, is what drives the speed of the trains up. I dont care how long it takes a grain train to arrive here, but I do care how long it sits in my receiving track, because every hour it sits there is one more hour the next train due has to wait to get in, and there is another train behind that one, and another, and another...how long it took them to get here dosnt matter to me, how long they sit here in the way does. The rush isn't so much about whats in the containers, but is about how long they occupy my tracks...the in-flow of the containers is constant, there is how many hundreds of ships headed this way? The cars, crews and locomotives needs to move them is also constant, and less then the volume of the containers. So my ability to move the containers is limited, unlike the ships, I have a fixed in place structure to move on, so speed equals volume, which equals profit. Ed 23 17 46 11 Reply 1234 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. 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Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub
QUOTE: Originally posted by adrianspeeder No, I think the train would need to move as fast as possible to keep up with the massive amounts of containers coming from ships. Adrianspeeder
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding By the same reasoning, are the shipping companies pressured to run their ships faster? For example, do they offer "premium" service, for a ship that travels 17 knots vs. 15 knots?
Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Friday, June 17, 2005 12:53 PM Also, it is the steamship line who controls the routing to say Chic or NY or Savannah as they are ones that choose the RR & routing they will use & will put in the contract with the RRs how many days they have to get the container from say LAX to CHIC. To attract the consignee they advertise to the consignee say from Tokyo to Chicago will take 13 days or Hong Kong/NYC 18 days just to give you a example. If the SS line does not perform upto what they advertise they become in jeopardy to lose there customer. Again I suggest you contact any of the major pacific carriers & analyze how they attract consignees & perform the transit time to destination they promised to the consignee[:p] Originally posted by gabe [ Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 2:51 PM Whew... let's take in some slack here... I see mega widget INC in middle USA somewhere taking in parts from China. They will call thier agent in some trade tower somewhere. That agent decides how the shipment will get from China to the customer. I think it costs x number of dollars to place the containers on a shipping line. And another x number of dollars for either trucking or train (Or both if inland container ports are used) The cheapest method gets the call. Regarding ship speeds, I study military history as a rank ametuar who knows nothing about that subject. Our Merchant Marine did pretty well at 15 knots during world war two. But 24 knots is more beneficial in cutting transit times. To get 30 knots on a warship is a special problem requiring massive engineering on a huge scale. Lucky for us we can drive carriers at speeds that are perhaps over 40 knots. No one will clarify the top speed as it is useful to the enemy in deciding how long before we confront him with a carrier battle group that is capable of displacing 1000 miles or more each 24 hours. Cargo ships have a different impact on the ocean and different problems than a warship and it will take a bit of power to get them to "Get up and run" I believe there were ships built that are capable of very high speeds but commerically did not really take effect. Take the cruise lines. We are building and deploying cruise ships larger than the Nimitz Class Carriers and capable of transporting thousands of people in luxury that would make Cunard or White Star of the Titanic days envious. Not to mention the sheer profit in having so much paying cargo on board. These cruise ships have the technology so that ONE man on the bridge can park it within 1 meter of the dock in the tightest of places such as Miami without assistance of tugs. He would use a variety of GPS sensors and a single joystick to do the task. But I am getting away from the cargo here. I think it benefits shipping to carry a massive load of cargo any distance. I dont think 15 knots or 24 knots really matter much. If we had 50 knot cargo ships, the goods will cost more and people will be more stressed getting the greater volume of goods thru the ports which appear to be pretty busy already. The topic of this thread is why are customers SO demanding of getting thier goods delievered ASAP!! as in within hours of a ship's arrival.. Never mind the fact that box sat on the ship for 30 days as it floated across the ocean. The answer I think lies within us as a people. Example.. You order a Model Locomotive of your dreams. You are told it will take a few weeks. Each day you wait on that order you wonder if they shipped it yet but not really concerned. The day you are notified that the order has shipped and on it's way to you... you WILL find yourself camping at the end of your mailbox waiting for UPS, Fed Ex or whatever to get the package to you ASAP! You might sneak home from work early to see if it hit your porch yet. I think this also infects customers who expect thier freight yesterday. I had one onion load from Seattle to the Boston Market. It took me 4 days as a single driver to make it in the dead of winter with ice and big snow in the north. The owner of the onions shouted in my ear... YOU ARE TOO (Insert degradatory word) SLOW!! I could have (Insert different option) gotten them onions here faster. I suspect you can load 44,000 pounds of onions on AIR CARGO and landed the darn thing 8 hours later on his market stall and he will STILL yell about how slow you were. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Friday, June 17, 2005 3:56 PM I still think you would get a funny look from any rational exec if you told him or her "if you pay x MORE dollars, I will be able to get you your product in 30 days and 4 hours instead of 30 days and 11 hours. Gabe Reply BaltACD Member sinceMay 2003 From: US 25,289 posts Posted by BaltACD on Friday, June 17, 2005 4:49 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Then, using that line of thought, why do steamship companies run intermodal so fast? [:D] Competition....on the major trade routes there are more than one carrier....If carrier A offers 7 day transit and carrier B offers 10 day transit who is going to get the business???? Never too old to have a happy childhood! Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 10:10 PM Try it this way: The new containerships carry 4,000 FEU's. The typical double stack carries 250 FEU's. That's 16 trainsets per ship. Now calculate how many ships call at your port of choice. Say it's 500 per year on average. To serve those 500 ships at 4,000 FEU's per ship takes 8000 trainsets per year. So now you ask yourself how many trainsets do I want to buy to meet that 8000 trainset demand. If my trainsets can make the turn-around in 10 days or so, I can make do with about 36 trips per trainset per year. That's a little over 9,000 containers per trainset per year, so I would need to invest in about 218 trainsets. If however my turn-around time is 15 days per trainset, I get only 24 trips per trainset per year or a little over 6,000 containers per trainset per year, so then I would need to invest in about 333 trainsets, e.g. my equipment costs just went up 50% because my double stacks move 20 mph slower than they are able. You still want to know why intermodal moves at the fastest allowable freight speed? Time is money. Reply Edit greyhounds Member sinceAugust 2003 From: Antioch, IL 4,371 posts Posted by greyhounds on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:10 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe Greyhounds, That was really interesting about the IC line. Do you know if the service was always run over the Alton? The IC's old St. Louis service, took the IC New Orleans main to Gilman, Il, to Springfield, and then South on a more Easterly tact than the Alton. This line went through my hometown of Mt. Olive. I have always wondered about the freight operations on this line--I have been told a lot of the IC freight went to Duqoin and then took the IC's Southern extension into St. Louis. I never quite understood why they would do this. One of my earlliest memories as a 6 year old is watching the IC tear the line out from Farmersville to Glen Carbon. It was nice seeing the traffic come through town, as they stopped running freight over the line for a few years prior, but when they started attaching chains to the engines and using them to pull out the rails, I was less amused I am surprised my young psyche ever survived. Ever since then, the IC has held a certain mystique to me. Gabe IIRC, and it's been a while.... The ICG functioned as a bridge line for carload auto parts from Michigan to the now deceased west coast auto assembly plants. These plants were primarily served by the SP. We'd receive trains from the GTW and C&O at Markham and assemble them for delivery to the SSW at East St. Louis. The interchange to the Cotton Belt was easier from the old IC facilities than the old GM&O facilities in ESTL. So the trains went through DuQuoin to use the old IC yard in ESTL and facilitate the interchange. One of the first things I did at the railroad was help set up a Markham - Pine Bluff run through train. It worked fine until the SP started to steal our power. We'd given 'em a train with three good SD-40s. They'd give us back a train with no power. We were loosing three locomotives a day. We had to shut it down. Just park the train without power in E. St. Louis and tell 'em it was there. They got it moved as best they could. In the mean time, our SD-40s were charging around Texas or wherever. They were the crappiest railroad I knew. And when you consider a customer once told me the L&N "hadn't figured out what they did for a living yet", that was saying something. I also worked on the abandonment of that old IC line. We just didn't need two lines between Springfield and St. Louis. Getting back to intermodal, where I spent most of my time...I'll tell you an L&N stupid story. Both the ICG and L&N served Chicago-New Orleans. For years, New Orleans was overbalanced inbound. We had more loads in than out. So we had to drag empty trailers northbound with no revenue. This is unused capacity. We worked to find loads for the northbound movements. We did it. We developed enough business northbound that we ran New Orleans dry of empty equipment. We had customers calling for equipment that we couldn't provide. Our New Orleans terminal manager solved the problem. He called the L&N and asked for their empty equipment. And they were dumb enough to give it to him. I would just sit there and think how *** dumb they were. They would have at least gotten some of those loads if they hadn't given us the equipment we asked for. But they just kept giving it to us. We'd take it under revenue load up to Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville (all competive points with the L&N) and reload it back south. If they give it to you, take it. Don't ever just assume the other guy knows what he's doing. "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 spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Saturday, June 18, 2005 6:35 AM Yes if Gabe has not yet done it he should secure some major Pacific SS lines schedules & analyze them. Then I am sure he will understand far more about international traffic then he does now. [:o)][:p] Originally posted by BaltACD Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:25 AM A long reply, which may ask more questions than it answers[8)]. [:)][:)][:)] Gabe, you asked several challenging questions in your original posting, with more to follow. I do perceive a lack of “core” questions that might have been addressed by others prior to in-depth discussion of turbinage, demurrage, etc. I am certainly grateful for the many, many intelligent and informed answers and comments you received; therefore so please don't think I'm being patronizing if I play this a little bit along the “For Dummies [like me!] approach….. ”The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities.” I agree with everyone about the basic trade-off between speed and cost (which, in RRing, often stems from the trade-off between speed and TORQUE.). Coal is a great example of the freight that's not in a hurry. If you can put it on something slick (the Mississippi River, the Teneessee-Tombigbee Waterway) that actually is moving the way you want it to go, then that's about the cheapest of all. Don't look for barges to disappear anytime soon; in fact, barge-makers’ stock has begun going up. Second cheap, of course, is dragging it over water—such as exporting coal down the aforementioned waterways to South America (Or maybe I’m just worked up over those soft-core coal-mining vixen in the GE commercial!) It sounds simple, but it is very high-tech, and along with economies of scale the more high-tech it is, the cheaper. Think of the scene with Marlon Brando unloading bananas in the movie “On the Waterfront” and how that might proceed today. Much less labor-intensive! And, I am compelled to say that other than air, the most expensive is to consolidate it (COFC, TOFC) and put it on something man-made but low in friction: a semi trailer, a scheduled intermodal run. I think everyone's right in that higher fuel costs hurt everyone, but turn out to be a comparative advantage for the RR's over individual or individual-under-contract long-haul truckers. (There was a fascinating article about five weeks ago in THE NEW YORKER about two guys' deadheading fresh, live lobsters from Nova Scotia to UPS' mega-facilities in Memphis, which will now keep the crustaceans alive until their customers call for them. The article is as much about how the shipper becomes the de facto wholesaler as much as it was about two truck drivers avoiding I-81. This makes a point about service bundled into transportation, which I will return later.) If I may give fle***o your concern about the inefficient time lag between China and store shelves, why would, say, Wal-Mart need weeks or months ago (probably weeks) to get its action-figures cued to the new "Star Wars" movie on a slow boat from China and then a moderately expensive drag from Long Beach or wherever to Proviso or wherever then Albany or wherever. I apologize if I missed something, but I didn’t see people making hay out of the fact that these days, the super carriers of goods or petroleum are HUGE--too big for the Panama Canal. So sending out a couple of ships that are merely medium-large to transit the Canal would be inefficient, and much worse would be sending out one of those new whoppers and then intermodal'ing the goods twice across the Isthmus to another waiting super carrier. [Trivia Note: The Genessee-Wyoming owns the Panama Canal Railroad.] So, let’s say I'm Wal-Mart and I want my zillions of cases of Obi-Wan Kenobi figurines to the USA. Even if it were cheaper (and it isn't) to go round either Cape than use a slow boat from China, I suspect reliability is the norm. Nor is it a matter of air-freight being cost-effective when shipping light but small like Obi-Wan figures (up in the air, weight still counts a lot, as well as space.) Wal-Mart will plead that masses of figurines meet “consumer demand,” but try demanding that Wal-Mart ship via DHL the right kind of Obi-Wan for my niece. I wouldn’t think of it; but it isn’t because the doll is no longer profitable. It would be, but not as much as it is now when Wal-Mart has established itself as more than a dominant force but a market-maker Note that store leaders get little if any advance word on what’s coming into the store and have less than no input about what they’d like to see on their own shelves.. Now that twenty-dollar GE iron, also from China. No, nobody’s about to air-freight that ‘cause heavy still matters in air freight and irons – well, they’re heavy as irons (;)[:p]. If it were a new steam-release valve for your new $175 Krups steam iron, it might get air-freighted from New Jersey or Germany or the Far East. Gabe, I didn't think of this until you challenged us re logistics but shipping deadlines, like transportation boxes themselves, can have different "modes." Wal-Mart is in no hurry for the Star-Wars figurines because they started chatting with George. Lucas and friends a good three years ago. Two years ago people (frequently now abroad) were designing them, then W-M bargained with Kenner or Mattel or whomever for specs and product launch (not for nothing do our nation’s largest corporations have big shiny regional hdqtrs as close as possible to Wal-Mart hdqtrs in Bentonville, AR, and the process is more integrated than I’ve made it seen.) Finally, W-M has probably already dealt with the shippers (BNSF, UP, CN) or expediters/logicians (Pacer International, Inc.) a LONG time ago--maybe as much as a year or more. (Point to ponder: does Wal-Mart draw up its own cost-of-fuel contracts to counter the RR lines’ guarantee-of-escalator contracts? Crazy if they don’t.) So a fuel-efficient super carrier takes ten days to a fortnight instead of a week. Who gives a doodle? Wal-Mart’s got the exclusive on Obi-Wan and Barbie, so there’s nobody out there to sneak-release them first. So the Guangzhou-to-Shanghai Railroad is going to triple its track, reducing from 3 days to one the time it takes to traverse the entire main line? Big whoop! (But it will matter for average carless Chinese who will see their trains jump from a 1910s level of speed and comfort to a 1950s.) Also, that extra day or two may come in mighty handy, especially if there’s a typhoon or hurricane to be dodged. Perhaps our shipping mavens will speak to that. So with a combination of reliability, planning and bargaining for the most efficient and cheapest routing, those Obi-Wan Kenobis and Barbies and that wonderful $20 GE iron, all from China with their pennies-on-the-dollar-and-you'd-better-like-it labor, at Wal-Mart, can be so INCREDIBLY cheap! My hunch is that Wal-Mart, after hitching their wagon many years ago to Messrs. Lucas and colleagues, operates on fairly pessimistic supply-and-transportation paradigms, because the figurines, much to this Uncle's consternation, always seem to wind up in the stores about five weeks ahead of the movie premier. So why doesn't Wal-Mart hold the items at its (global) intake facilities or ports, or at its (regional) warehouses? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. And that's the mixed blessing of "just-in-time" inventory. Nothing can sit still! (Canadian National's 2004 report very cleverly has as its cover photograph an empty rail yard, and inside the caption explains that all CN's motive power and rolling stock are out there earning money, not idling away at the yard.) So that’s the devil in the details: if the stuff is punctual and not damaged (however slow) that’s fine, as long as it’s punctual. Punctuality counts too, once the goods enter Wal-Mart’s custody. But for slightly different reasons: not only is at (1) too “hot” an inventory environment these days to cool things by lying around US warehouses or pay demurrage or whatever; but (2) whenever Obi-Wan shows up, even if it’s five weeks early, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will do its best (sans heroics) to make sure that the figurines in Portland, OR don’t arrive that much earlier than those destined for Portland, ME. So slow-boat from China is one mode, and TOFC, stacks or daredevil trucking teams are another shipping urgency—one of the concepts of intermodality is, in fact, that things like schedules that seem counterintuitive on the surface really aren’t once an understanding is reached that ASAP is good for some situations and not others, and it almost always costs more. Let’s not assign morality to transportation: It isn’t the least bit “hypocritical” to take ultra-slow crossing of the Pacific with medium-to-very fast ground shipping here at home. It’s the consolidated results that matter; as I keep stressing reliability as well as a coherent cost. Perhaps instead of asking “Why is intermodal so fast” you might have asked, “Why can’t everything be as fast, ASAP?” Which gets me to unit trains. Gabe, I don’t think your idea of speeding up unit trains is a great one, for reasons that have been touched on as well as a couple of new ones. First, in the eternal struggle between torque and speed, “patient” coal or iron filings or gardener’s stone (but mostly coal), it’s best to sacrifice speed for torque. And that’s why the unit coal trains I see in Rochelle, Ill., headed for places like Wisconsin Power are pulled by a two or three frequently begrimed and old (probably all-DC) units, with perhaps a pusher on the end. A power plant is a great example about a service/industry that doesn’t have to worry too much (barring strikes, fuel shortages, inflation!) about what it needs—it needs the specified coal, it needs to be absolutely sure enough is on hand at all time, and (a luxury in today’s just-in-time era) it probably has a pile or two of “patient” coal out back (again coal supplies, unlike Omaha Steaks or Obi-Wan, don’t mind getting dumped on the ground and even snowed on a little). So, for a coal unit train the operating rate of speed has a lot to do with money, and possibly also a lot to do with local politics. According to figures (a couple of years old, I admit) from the DM&E, it takes two and-a-half minutes for 120 cars of an empty unit train to pass by a crossing at 40-45 mph. Make that 150 cars of laden coal train with a speed below 35 – it may be the cheapest in terms of fuel to go at 20 but a third more cars and almost two-thirds less speed is simply unacceptable. Even a third more cars and only a third less speed (35 mph) is pretty wearing. Studies have shown that citizens are OK about waiting for a slow train at a grade crossing for up to that 2.5 minutes, but at about three (all of 30 sec. later) they start getting antsy and they REALLY heat up after four! For more background, Google for “DM&E,” “Schieffer” “unit trains” and “Rochester, Minnesota.” I suppose with today’s huge, usually hump-free and LONG logistics centers, the Class One’s could probably marshal up 200-car unit trains. Bad idea! Even if three weekly dumps at that Wisconsin power plant would equal the tonnage of five Mon-Fri 120-yard trains, consider that: (1) incremental savings would be slight; (2) the electric co. likes to hear the reassuring thunder of coal every working day; and (3) most of all, it would be totally unacceptable to folks in places like Rochester, MN and smaller communities like Rochelle, IL, where grade crossings are the norm. Moral: for unit trains don’t think “wayward shuttle,” think “Berlin Airlift.” And, with today’s longer sidings, several coal trains in motion will not “clog” the system. Thank modern CTC. I think the people who spoke before me are using their transportation expertise and common sense and rightly judged consumer goods to be in an intermediate position of urgency between unit train and UPS. UPS intrigues me. Lots and lots of TOFC with the UPS label pounds over that double diamond at Rochelle, Illinois, mostly BNSF but some UP; and once in a while, when such trains are running slower than their usual 50-ish mph, I can hear machinery humming and see fans whirling in some of the UPS trailers. Is it a ventilator? Or is it even possible for generator/alternator to summon up enough power to run refrigerated or frozen? (I’m not talking about fridge cars, mind.) For that matter, when I have Amazon books shipped at their cheapest level of delivery, that usually involves separate shipments, all of which I could track out of Seattle or northern Nevada (near Reno, I think); and the same for my Tampa cigars that routed through Jacksonville, FL, then Lexington, KY, then Dolton, IL (south suburban Chicago). For the most part, I no longer can; instead I receive a cold but correct computer message to the effect that “You’re not a corporate shipper so all we’re going to tell you now is that your order is scheduled to get to you on time.” Could UP be marshalling up parcel trains at Global III to head into Chicago? Or BNSF sending their stuff—it’s quite possible—all the way downtown in Chicago to that huge UPS hub? The stuff is frequently late (but it was frequently late when it checked into Chicagoland at Dolton, having come up the Interstates by their trucks). Could it be that some company like Pacer, International is routing the stuff by rail? (Interesting company; I have their 2004 Annual Report in hand. Made a ton of money last year, and, if “non-asset-based” means what I think it does, they don’t even own most of those pretty blue Pacer/Stacktrain mods.) Perhaps the transport pros would like to speak of the phenomena of service companies like Pacer (again with the service!). The chain of supply under "just-in-time" regimes may indeed be too tight. On the other hand, new technologies have brought new cost efficiencies to shippers. This is Rochelle scuttlebutt, but it's probably true: the local farmers can get a dime more a bushel for their corn (a not inconsiderable amount) if they bring it straight to the railhead itself and not to the local elevator! Ah, a new kind of service--or even if it's foregoing service, there's a calculable saving! Oh brave new world...[:0] In closing, who among our ocean-transportation experts can recommend the biggest trans-Pacific companies? I have an A.R. from Alexander & Baldwin, but doubt that that is anywhere near the biggest carrier, except possibly to Hawaii. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:10 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous. a). Because the ocean going liners don't have to compete with trucks? A "slow boat from china" is still a slow boat from china ...no matter who pilots it. Whereas once the containers hit terra firma the green flag falls b). Volume: if you are a merchant expecting 20 containers full of merchandise, you probably have very little control on selecting one overseas container company over the other, IN THE CONTEXT OF SPEED, and as such a small customer you are not going to be able to command priority routing from the ship. However, once the containers are on land, you can barter with the devil all you want as far as who is willing to promise you what, with those contending forced to butt heads on details. and. c). timing... Perhaps after HAVING to wait for that slow boat from china to make it's 30 day transit...the welled up anticipation of customers waiting for their goods makes that last 4 hour differential transit time all the more critical? If you've been forced to wait for your order for 30 days already, which is better to the impatient mentality? waiting 1 day longer or 2 days longer to take delivery. You put the pressure on the point you can actually control... Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:14 PM Good points all, Mr. AntiGates. As an individual, I would get very antsy waiting -- is it really close to a month? -- for goods to cross the Pacific. As a cold (or at least value-neutral) institution like Wal-Mart (or Target, or Home Depot, Menard's, etc.), I'm not sure my employees would individually get close enough to large-scale freight movement to really impose a time-frame on and worry or care much about any particular movement--with obvious exceptions, of course, like buyers who have had to keep their own special info about CD's and toys, etc., to themselves for the good of the company. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:22 PM Antigates, I am not saying your wrong. I am way to ignorant on this subject to make such a bombastic statement. However, it just seems to me that you are missing my premise. I know what you are saying about steamships not having to compete with truckers. But, what I am saying, is that is an irrelevant red herring. Futuremodal, Greyhounds, Oltmand, MP173, and others have given me good explanations that, at the very least, shed light on my conundrum. However, I still stick to my initial premise that--absent some of the other reasons referenced above--truck competition with steamships vel non, it makes absolutely no sense to me to pay a dollar more for freight to have it arive in one month and 4 hours instead of one month and 11 hours. It seems irrelevant to me that steamships aren't competing with trucks, all that really matters is the infintesible difference reflected in the bottom line. Gabe Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:42 PM Gabe: What if the real difference between one month and 4 hours vs one month and 11 hours is an arrival time of 6 AM for the former vs 1 PM for the latter? Makes a big difference if the former allows stock to be placed on shelves while the latter makes you wait one day. In this case, the difference of 7 hours turns into a difference of 24 hours. In reality, except for the short haul lanes, the 20 mph max speed difference in your original example tends to translate into days, not just hours, for the longer haul corridors. Statistically speaking, the more expediently you get on down the road will lessen the likelyhood of delays such as crews going dead before the next crew change, having to go in the hole for UPS-TOFC, etc. It was stated best when it was stated, "Why does everything else have to move so slow?". Reply Edit Jack_S Member sinceDecember 2004 339 posts Posted by Jack_S on Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:02 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe One point to be looked at is the number of containers that pass a given point in one time interval. Yes, ships are slow but they carry a incredible number of containers compared to a train. And they are moving 24/7. So they carry a larger number past any given waypoint than a train can even at a higher speed. The big problem is not to go fast, it is to prevent going very slow or stopping. In that the ports are the big obstacle. But the basic reason the RRs run that fast is simply that some customers will pay more if they do. The customers have a time problem: they perceive a market for something and order it. If it takes too long to get the goods to the stores, the fickle market may disappear and they will be left holding the bag. So they are willing to pay extra to reduce shipping time even by a matter of a few days. Jack Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:32 AM **Ahem.. customers expecting freight of whatever kind are usually on THIER own schedule. For example.. Kroger foods wants your meat load delivered onto their dock by 11 AM in some locations so they can ship that evening. If you dont make that 11 AM cut off, you are likely to lose that day, the next day and have to catch up with trying to find a load once you did get empty. Ships want trucks and trains to take thier burden off. I sometimes wonder how many HO Scale Precision Craft Models are on the way across the Pacific as we type this thread? Reply Edit edblysard Member sinceMarch 2002 9,265 posts Posted by edblysard on Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:42 AM Well, Answer a question with a question... Why, after such a long and time comsuming trip, would they be in such a hurry to unload the ship after it docks? After all, it took forever to get here, right? Because they have to turn the ship back, and head out to get more containers... Why run a container train so fast? Because, the number of cars available to move the containers is limited, and less than the number of containers needing to move, there are more containers on the way, in a continious loop... How long the containers take to arive at the port is irrelevent to the railroad, the fact that there will alway be more, arriving hourly, is what drives the speed of the trains up. I dont care how long it takes a grain train to arrive here, but I do care how long it sits in my receiving track, because every hour it sits there is one more hour the next train due has to wait to get in, and there is another train behind that one, and another, and another...how long it took them to get here dosnt matter to me, how long they sit here in the way does. The rush isn't so much about whats in the containers, but is about how long they occupy my tracks...the in-flow of the containers is constant, there is how many hundreds of ships headed this way? The cars, crews and locomotives needs to move them is also constant, and less then the volume of the containers. So my ability to move the containers is limited, unlike the ships, I have a fixed in place structure to move on, so speed equals volume, which equals profit. Ed 23 17 46 11 Reply 1234 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. 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Originally posted by gabe [ Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 2:51 PM Whew... let's take in some slack here... I see mega widget INC in middle USA somewhere taking in parts from China. They will call thier agent in some trade tower somewhere. That agent decides how the shipment will get from China to the customer. I think it costs x number of dollars to place the containers on a shipping line. And another x number of dollars for either trucking or train (Or both if inland container ports are used) The cheapest method gets the call. Regarding ship speeds, I study military history as a rank ametuar who knows nothing about that subject. Our Merchant Marine did pretty well at 15 knots during world war two. But 24 knots is more beneficial in cutting transit times. To get 30 knots on a warship is a special problem requiring massive engineering on a huge scale. Lucky for us we can drive carriers at speeds that are perhaps over 40 knots. No one will clarify the top speed as it is useful to the enemy in deciding how long before we confront him with a carrier battle group that is capable of displacing 1000 miles or more each 24 hours. Cargo ships have a different impact on the ocean and different problems than a warship and it will take a bit of power to get them to "Get up and run" I believe there were ships built that are capable of very high speeds but commerically did not really take effect. Take the cruise lines. We are building and deploying cruise ships larger than the Nimitz Class Carriers and capable of transporting thousands of people in luxury that would make Cunard or White Star of the Titanic days envious. Not to mention the sheer profit in having so much paying cargo on board. These cruise ships have the technology so that ONE man on the bridge can park it within 1 meter of the dock in the tightest of places such as Miami without assistance of tugs. He would use a variety of GPS sensors and a single joystick to do the task. But I am getting away from the cargo here. I think it benefits shipping to carry a massive load of cargo any distance. I dont think 15 knots or 24 knots really matter much. If we had 50 knot cargo ships, the goods will cost more and people will be more stressed getting the greater volume of goods thru the ports which appear to be pretty busy already. The topic of this thread is why are customers SO demanding of getting thier goods delievered ASAP!! as in within hours of a ship's arrival.. Never mind the fact that box sat on the ship for 30 days as it floated across the ocean. The answer I think lies within us as a people. Example.. You order a Model Locomotive of your dreams. You are told it will take a few weeks. Each day you wait on that order you wonder if they shipped it yet but not really concerned. The day you are notified that the order has shipped and on it's way to you... you WILL find yourself camping at the end of your mailbox waiting for UPS, Fed Ex or whatever to get the package to you ASAP! You might sneak home from work early to see if it hit your porch yet. I think this also infects customers who expect thier freight yesterday. I had one onion load from Seattle to the Boston Market. It took me 4 days as a single driver to make it in the dead of winter with ice and big snow in the north. The owner of the onions shouted in my ear... YOU ARE TOO (Insert degradatory word) SLOW!! I could have (Insert different option) gotten them onions here faster. I suspect you can load 44,000 pounds of onions on AIR CARGO and landed the darn thing 8 hours later on his market stall and he will STILL yell about how slow you were. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Friday, June 17, 2005 3:56 PM I still think you would get a funny look from any rational exec if you told him or her "if you pay x MORE dollars, I will be able to get you your product in 30 days and 4 hours instead of 30 days and 11 hours. Gabe Reply BaltACD Member sinceMay 2003 From: US 25,289 posts Posted by BaltACD on Friday, June 17, 2005 4:49 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Then, using that line of thought, why do steamship companies run intermodal so fast? [:D] Competition....on the major trade routes there are more than one carrier....If carrier A offers 7 day transit and carrier B offers 10 day transit who is going to get the business???? Never too old to have a happy childhood! Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Friday, June 17, 2005 10:10 PM Try it this way: The new containerships carry 4,000 FEU's. The typical double stack carries 250 FEU's. That's 16 trainsets per ship. Now calculate how many ships call at your port of choice. Say it's 500 per year on average. To serve those 500 ships at 4,000 FEU's per ship takes 8000 trainsets per year. So now you ask yourself how many trainsets do I want to buy to meet that 8000 trainset demand. If my trainsets can make the turn-around in 10 days or so, I can make do with about 36 trips per trainset per year. That's a little over 9,000 containers per trainset per year, so I would need to invest in about 218 trainsets. If however my turn-around time is 15 days per trainset, I get only 24 trips per trainset per year or a little over 6,000 containers per trainset per year, so then I would need to invest in about 333 trainsets, e.g. my equipment costs just went up 50% because my double stacks move 20 mph slower than they are able. You still want to know why intermodal moves at the fastest allowable freight speed? Time is money. Reply Edit greyhounds Member sinceAugust 2003 From: Antioch, IL 4,371 posts Posted by greyhounds on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:10 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe Greyhounds, That was really interesting about the IC line. Do you know if the service was always run over the Alton? The IC's old St. Louis service, took the IC New Orleans main to Gilman, Il, to Springfield, and then South on a more Easterly tact than the Alton. This line went through my hometown of Mt. Olive. I have always wondered about the freight operations on this line--I have been told a lot of the IC freight went to Duqoin and then took the IC's Southern extension into St. Louis. I never quite understood why they would do this. One of my earlliest memories as a 6 year old is watching the IC tear the line out from Farmersville to Glen Carbon. It was nice seeing the traffic come through town, as they stopped running freight over the line for a few years prior, but when they started attaching chains to the engines and using them to pull out the rails, I was less amused I am surprised my young psyche ever survived. Ever since then, the IC has held a certain mystique to me. Gabe IIRC, and it's been a while.... The ICG functioned as a bridge line for carload auto parts from Michigan to the now deceased west coast auto assembly plants. These plants were primarily served by the SP. We'd receive trains from the GTW and C&O at Markham and assemble them for delivery to the SSW at East St. Louis. The interchange to the Cotton Belt was easier from the old IC facilities than the old GM&O facilities in ESTL. So the trains went through DuQuoin to use the old IC yard in ESTL and facilitate the interchange. One of the first things I did at the railroad was help set up a Markham - Pine Bluff run through train. It worked fine until the SP started to steal our power. We'd given 'em a train with three good SD-40s. They'd give us back a train with no power. We were loosing three locomotives a day. We had to shut it down. Just park the train without power in E. St. Louis and tell 'em it was there. They got it moved as best they could. In the mean time, our SD-40s were charging around Texas or wherever. They were the crappiest railroad I knew. And when you consider a customer once told me the L&N "hadn't figured out what they did for a living yet", that was saying something. I also worked on the abandonment of that old IC line. We just didn't need two lines between Springfield and St. Louis. Getting back to intermodal, where I spent most of my time...I'll tell you an L&N stupid story. Both the ICG and L&N served Chicago-New Orleans. For years, New Orleans was overbalanced inbound. We had more loads in than out. So we had to drag empty trailers northbound with no revenue. This is unused capacity. We worked to find loads for the northbound movements. We did it. We developed enough business northbound that we ran New Orleans dry of empty equipment. We had customers calling for equipment that we couldn't provide. Our New Orleans terminal manager solved the problem. He called the L&N and asked for their empty equipment. And they were dumb enough to give it to him. I would just sit there and think how *** dumb they were. They would have at least gotten some of those loads if they hadn't given us the equipment we asked for. But they just kept giving it to us. We'd take it under revenue load up to Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville (all competive points with the L&N) and reload it back south. If they give it to you, take it. Don't ever just assume the other guy knows what he's doing. "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 spbed Member sinceDecember 2001 From: Austin TX 4,941 posts Posted by spbed on Saturday, June 18, 2005 6:35 AM Yes if Gabe has not yet done it he should secure some major Pacific SS lines schedules & analyze them. Then I am sure he will understand far more about international traffic then he does now. [:o)][:p] Originally posted by BaltACD Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:25 AM A long reply, which may ask more questions than it answers[8)]. [:)][:)][:)] Gabe, you asked several challenging questions in your original posting, with more to follow. I do perceive a lack of “core” questions that might have been addressed by others prior to in-depth discussion of turbinage, demurrage, etc. I am certainly grateful for the many, many intelligent and informed answers and comments you received; therefore so please don't think I'm being patronizing if I play this a little bit along the “For Dummies [like me!] approach….. ”The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities.” I agree with everyone about the basic trade-off between speed and cost (which, in RRing, often stems from the trade-off between speed and TORQUE.). Coal is a great example of the freight that's not in a hurry. If you can put it on something slick (the Mississippi River, the Teneessee-Tombigbee Waterway) that actually is moving the way you want it to go, then that's about the cheapest of all. Don't look for barges to disappear anytime soon; in fact, barge-makers’ stock has begun going up. Second cheap, of course, is dragging it over water—such as exporting coal down the aforementioned waterways to South America (Or maybe I’m just worked up over those soft-core coal-mining vixen in the GE commercial!) It sounds simple, but it is very high-tech, and along with economies of scale the more high-tech it is, the cheaper. Think of the scene with Marlon Brando unloading bananas in the movie “On the Waterfront” and how that might proceed today. Much less labor-intensive! And, I am compelled to say that other than air, the most expensive is to consolidate it (COFC, TOFC) and put it on something man-made but low in friction: a semi trailer, a scheduled intermodal run. I think everyone's right in that higher fuel costs hurt everyone, but turn out to be a comparative advantage for the RR's over individual or individual-under-contract long-haul truckers. (There was a fascinating article about five weeks ago in THE NEW YORKER about two guys' deadheading fresh, live lobsters from Nova Scotia to UPS' mega-facilities in Memphis, which will now keep the crustaceans alive until their customers call for them. The article is as much about how the shipper becomes the de facto wholesaler as much as it was about two truck drivers avoiding I-81. This makes a point about service bundled into transportation, which I will return later.) If I may give fle***o your concern about the inefficient time lag between China and store shelves, why would, say, Wal-Mart need weeks or months ago (probably weeks) to get its action-figures cued to the new "Star Wars" movie on a slow boat from China and then a moderately expensive drag from Long Beach or wherever to Proviso or wherever then Albany or wherever. I apologize if I missed something, but I didn’t see people making hay out of the fact that these days, the super carriers of goods or petroleum are HUGE--too big for the Panama Canal. So sending out a couple of ships that are merely medium-large to transit the Canal would be inefficient, and much worse would be sending out one of those new whoppers and then intermodal'ing the goods twice across the Isthmus to another waiting super carrier. [Trivia Note: The Genessee-Wyoming owns the Panama Canal Railroad.] So, let’s say I'm Wal-Mart and I want my zillions of cases of Obi-Wan Kenobi figurines to the USA. Even if it were cheaper (and it isn't) to go round either Cape than use a slow boat from China, I suspect reliability is the norm. Nor is it a matter of air-freight being cost-effective when shipping light but small like Obi-Wan figures (up in the air, weight still counts a lot, as well as space.) Wal-Mart will plead that masses of figurines meet “consumer demand,” but try demanding that Wal-Mart ship via DHL the right kind of Obi-Wan for my niece. I wouldn’t think of it; but it isn’t because the doll is no longer profitable. It would be, but not as much as it is now when Wal-Mart has established itself as more than a dominant force but a market-maker Note that store leaders get little if any advance word on what’s coming into the store and have less than no input about what they’d like to see on their own shelves.. Now that twenty-dollar GE iron, also from China. No, nobody’s about to air-freight that ‘cause heavy still matters in air freight and irons – well, they’re heavy as irons (;)[:p]. If it were a new steam-release valve for your new $175 Krups steam iron, it might get air-freighted from New Jersey or Germany or the Far East. Gabe, I didn't think of this until you challenged us re logistics but shipping deadlines, like transportation boxes themselves, can have different "modes." Wal-Mart is in no hurry for the Star-Wars figurines because they started chatting with George. Lucas and friends a good three years ago. Two years ago people (frequently now abroad) were designing them, then W-M bargained with Kenner or Mattel or whomever for specs and product launch (not for nothing do our nation’s largest corporations have big shiny regional hdqtrs as close as possible to Wal-Mart hdqtrs in Bentonville, AR, and the process is more integrated than I’ve made it seen.) Finally, W-M has probably already dealt with the shippers (BNSF, UP, CN) or expediters/logicians (Pacer International, Inc.) a LONG time ago--maybe as much as a year or more. (Point to ponder: does Wal-Mart draw up its own cost-of-fuel contracts to counter the RR lines’ guarantee-of-escalator contracts? Crazy if they don’t.) So a fuel-efficient super carrier takes ten days to a fortnight instead of a week. Who gives a doodle? Wal-Mart’s got the exclusive on Obi-Wan and Barbie, so there’s nobody out there to sneak-release them first. So the Guangzhou-to-Shanghai Railroad is going to triple its track, reducing from 3 days to one the time it takes to traverse the entire main line? Big whoop! (But it will matter for average carless Chinese who will see their trains jump from a 1910s level of speed and comfort to a 1950s.) Also, that extra day or two may come in mighty handy, especially if there’s a typhoon or hurricane to be dodged. Perhaps our shipping mavens will speak to that. So with a combination of reliability, planning and bargaining for the most efficient and cheapest routing, those Obi-Wan Kenobis and Barbies and that wonderful $20 GE iron, all from China with their pennies-on-the-dollar-and-you'd-better-like-it labor, at Wal-Mart, can be so INCREDIBLY cheap! My hunch is that Wal-Mart, after hitching their wagon many years ago to Messrs. Lucas and colleagues, operates on fairly pessimistic supply-and-transportation paradigms, because the figurines, much to this Uncle's consternation, always seem to wind up in the stores about five weeks ahead of the movie premier. So why doesn't Wal-Mart hold the items at its (global) intake facilities or ports, or at its (regional) warehouses? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. And that's the mixed blessing of "just-in-time" inventory. Nothing can sit still! (Canadian National's 2004 report very cleverly has as its cover photograph an empty rail yard, and inside the caption explains that all CN's motive power and rolling stock are out there earning money, not idling away at the yard.) So that’s the devil in the details: if the stuff is punctual and not damaged (however slow) that’s fine, as long as it’s punctual. Punctuality counts too, once the goods enter Wal-Mart’s custody. But for slightly different reasons: not only is at (1) too “hot” an inventory environment these days to cool things by lying around US warehouses or pay demurrage or whatever; but (2) whenever Obi-Wan shows up, even if it’s five weeks early, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will do its best (sans heroics) to make sure that the figurines in Portland, OR don’t arrive that much earlier than those destined for Portland, ME. So slow-boat from China is one mode, and TOFC, stacks or daredevil trucking teams are another shipping urgency—one of the concepts of intermodality is, in fact, that things like schedules that seem counterintuitive on the surface really aren’t once an understanding is reached that ASAP is good for some situations and not others, and it almost always costs more. Let’s not assign morality to transportation: It isn’t the least bit “hypocritical” to take ultra-slow crossing of the Pacific with medium-to-very fast ground shipping here at home. It’s the consolidated results that matter; as I keep stressing reliability as well as a coherent cost. Perhaps instead of asking “Why is intermodal so fast” you might have asked, “Why can’t everything be as fast, ASAP?” Which gets me to unit trains. Gabe, I don’t think your idea of speeding up unit trains is a great one, for reasons that have been touched on as well as a couple of new ones. First, in the eternal struggle between torque and speed, “patient” coal or iron filings or gardener’s stone (but mostly coal), it’s best to sacrifice speed for torque. And that’s why the unit coal trains I see in Rochelle, Ill., headed for places like Wisconsin Power are pulled by a two or three frequently begrimed and old (probably all-DC) units, with perhaps a pusher on the end. A power plant is a great example about a service/industry that doesn’t have to worry too much (barring strikes, fuel shortages, inflation!) about what it needs—it needs the specified coal, it needs to be absolutely sure enough is on hand at all time, and (a luxury in today’s just-in-time era) it probably has a pile or two of “patient” coal out back (again coal supplies, unlike Omaha Steaks or Obi-Wan, don’t mind getting dumped on the ground and even snowed on a little). So, for a coal unit train the operating rate of speed has a lot to do with money, and possibly also a lot to do with local politics. According to figures (a couple of years old, I admit) from the DM&E, it takes two and-a-half minutes for 120 cars of an empty unit train to pass by a crossing at 40-45 mph. Make that 150 cars of laden coal train with a speed below 35 – it may be the cheapest in terms of fuel to go at 20 but a third more cars and almost two-thirds less speed is simply unacceptable. Even a third more cars and only a third less speed (35 mph) is pretty wearing. Studies have shown that citizens are OK about waiting for a slow train at a grade crossing for up to that 2.5 minutes, but at about three (all of 30 sec. later) they start getting antsy and they REALLY heat up after four! For more background, Google for “DM&E,” “Schieffer” “unit trains” and “Rochester, Minnesota.” I suppose with today’s huge, usually hump-free and LONG logistics centers, the Class One’s could probably marshal up 200-car unit trains. Bad idea! Even if three weekly dumps at that Wisconsin power plant would equal the tonnage of five Mon-Fri 120-yard trains, consider that: (1) incremental savings would be slight; (2) the electric co. likes to hear the reassuring thunder of coal every working day; and (3) most of all, it would be totally unacceptable to folks in places like Rochester, MN and smaller communities like Rochelle, IL, where grade crossings are the norm. Moral: for unit trains don’t think “wayward shuttle,” think “Berlin Airlift.” And, with today’s longer sidings, several coal trains in motion will not “clog” the system. Thank modern CTC. I think the people who spoke before me are using their transportation expertise and common sense and rightly judged consumer goods to be in an intermediate position of urgency between unit train and UPS. UPS intrigues me. Lots and lots of TOFC with the UPS label pounds over that double diamond at Rochelle, Illinois, mostly BNSF but some UP; and once in a while, when such trains are running slower than their usual 50-ish mph, I can hear machinery humming and see fans whirling in some of the UPS trailers. Is it a ventilator? Or is it even possible for generator/alternator to summon up enough power to run refrigerated or frozen? (I’m not talking about fridge cars, mind.) For that matter, when I have Amazon books shipped at their cheapest level of delivery, that usually involves separate shipments, all of which I could track out of Seattle or northern Nevada (near Reno, I think); and the same for my Tampa cigars that routed through Jacksonville, FL, then Lexington, KY, then Dolton, IL (south suburban Chicago). For the most part, I no longer can; instead I receive a cold but correct computer message to the effect that “You’re not a corporate shipper so all we’re going to tell you now is that your order is scheduled to get to you on time.” Could UP be marshalling up parcel trains at Global III to head into Chicago? Or BNSF sending their stuff—it’s quite possible—all the way downtown in Chicago to that huge UPS hub? The stuff is frequently late (but it was frequently late when it checked into Chicagoland at Dolton, having come up the Interstates by their trucks). Could it be that some company like Pacer, International is routing the stuff by rail? (Interesting company; I have their 2004 Annual Report in hand. Made a ton of money last year, and, if “non-asset-based” means what I think it does, they don’t even own most of those pretty blue Pacer/Stacktrain mods.) Perhaps the transport pros would like to speak of the phenomena of service companies like Pacer (again with the service!). The chain of supply under "just-in-time" regimes may indeed be too tight. On the other hand, new technologies have brought new cost efficiencies to shippers. This is Rochelle scuttlebutt, but it's probably true: the local farmers can get a dime more a bushel for their corn (a not inconsiderable amount) if they bring it straight to the railhead itself and not to the local elevator! Ah, a new kind of service--or even if it's foregoing service, there's a calculable saving! Oh brave new world...[:0] In closing, who among our ocean-transportation experts can recommend the biggest trans-Pacific companies? I have an A.R. from Alexander & Baldwin, but doubt that that is anywhere near the biggest carrier, except possibly to Hawaii. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:10 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous. a). Because the ocean going liners don't have to compete with trucks? A "slow boat from china" is still a slow boat from china ...no matter who pilots it. Whereas once the containers hit terra firma the green flag falls b). Volume: if you are a merchant expecting 20 containers full of merchandise, you probably have very little control on selecting one overseas container company over the other, IN THE CONTEXT OF SPEED, and as such a small customer you are not going to be able to command priority routing from the ship. However, once the containers are on land, you can barter with the devil all you want as far as who is willing to promise you what, with those contending forced to butt heads on details. and. c). timing... Perhaps after HAVING to wait for that slow boat from china to make it's 30 day transit...the welled up anticipation of customers waiting for their goods makes that last 4 hour differential transit time all the more critical? If you've been forced to wait for your order for 30 days already, which is better to the impatient mentality? waiting 1 day longer or 2 days longer to take delivery. You put the pressure on the point you can actually control... Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:14 PM Good points all, Mr. AntiGates. As an individual, I would get very antsy waiting -- is it really close to a month? -- for goods to cross the Pacific. As a cold (or at least value-neutral) institution like Wal-Mart (or Target, or Home Depot, Menard's, etc.), I'm not sure my employees would individually get close enough to large-scale freight movement to really impose a time-frame on and worry or care much about any particular movement--with obvious exceptions, of course, like buyers who have had to keep their own special info about CD's and toys, etc., to themselves for the good of the company. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:22 PM Antigates, I am not saying your wrong. I am way to ignorant on this subject to make such a bombastic statement. However, it just seems to me that you are missing my premise. I know what you are saying about steamships not having to compete with truckers. But, what I am saying, is that is an irrelevant red herring. Futuremodal, Greyhounds, Oltmand, MP173, and others have given me good explanations that, at the very least, shed light on my conundrum. However, I still stick to my initial premise that--absent some of the other reasons referenced above--truck competition with steamships vel non, it makes absolutely no sense to me to pay a dollar more for freight to have it arive in one month and 4 hours instead of one month and 11 hours. It seems irrelevant to me that steamships aren't competing with trucks, all that really matters is the infintesible difference reflected in the bottom line. Gabe Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:42 PM Gabe: What if the real difference between one month and 4 hours vs one month and 11 hours is an arrival time of 6 AM for the former vs 1 PM for the latter? Makes a big difference if the former allows stock to be placed on shelves while the latter makes you wait one day. In this case, the difference of 7 hours turns into a difference of 24 hours. In reality, except for the short haul lanes, the 20 mph max speed difference in your original example tends to translate into days, not just hours, for the longer haul corridors. Statistically speaking, the more expediently you get on down the road will lessen the likelyhood of delays such as crews going dead before the next crew change, having to go in the hole for UPS-TOFC, etc. It was stated best when it was stated, "Why does everything else have to move so slow?". Reply Edit Jack_S Member sinceDecember 2004 339 posts Posted by Jack_S on Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:02 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe One point to be looked at is the number of containers that pass a given point in one time interval. Yes, ships are slow but they carry a incredible number of containers compared to a train. And they are moving 24/7. So they carry a larger number past any given waypoint than a train can even at a higher speed. The big problem is not to go fast, it is to prevent going very slow or stopping. In that the ports are the big obstacle. But the basic reason the RRs run that fast is simply that some customers will pay more if they do. The customers have a time problem: they perceive a market for something and order it. If it takes too long to get the goods to the stores, the fickle market may disappear and they will be left holding the bag. So they are willing to pay extra to reduce shipping time even by a matter of a few days. Jack Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:32 AM **Ahem.. customers expecting freight of whatever kind are usually on THIER own schedule. For example.. Kroger foods wants your meat load delivered onto their dock by 11 AM in some locations so they can ship that evening. If you dont make that 11 AM cut off, you are likely to lose that day, the next day and have to catch up with trying to find a load once you did get empty. Ships want trucks and trains to take thier burden off. I sometimes wonder how many HO Scale Precision Craft Models are on the way across the Pacific as we type this thread? Reply Edit edblysard Member sinceMarch 2002 9,265 posts Posted by edblysard on Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:42 AM Well, Answer a question with a question... Why, after such a long and time comsuming trip, would they be in such a hurry to unload the ship after it docks? After all, it took forever to get here, right? Because they have to turn the ship back, and head out to get more containers... Why run a container train so fast? Because, the number of cars available to move the containers is limited, and less than the number of containers needing to move, there are more containers on the way, in a continious loop... How long the containers take to arive at the port is irrelevent to the railroad, the fact that there will alway be more, arriving hourly, is what drives the speed of the trains up. I dont care how long it takes a grain train to arrive here, but I do care how long it sits in my receiving track, because every hour it sits there is one more hour the next train due has to wait to get in, and there is another train behind that one, and another, and another...how long it took them to get here dosnt matter to me, how long they sit here in the way does. The rush isn't so much about whats in the containers, but is about how long they occupy my tracks...the in-flow of the containers is constant, there is how many hundreds of ships headed this way? The cars, crews and locomotives needs to move them is also constant, and less then the volume of the containers. So my ability to move the containers is limited, unlike the ships, I have a fixed in place structure to move on, so speed equals volume, which equals profit. Ed 23 17 46 11 Reply 1234 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. 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QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Then, using that line of thought, why do steamship companies run intermodal so fast? [:D]
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe Greyhounds, That was really interesting about the IC line. Do you know if the service was always run over the Alton? The IC's old St. Louis service, took the IC New Orleans main to Gilman, Il, to Springfield, and then South on a more Easterly tact than the Alton. This line went through my hometown of Mt. Olive. I have always wondered about the freight operations on this line--I have been told a lot of the IC freight went to Duqoin and then took the IC's Southern extension into St. Louis. I never quite understood why they would do this. One of my earlliest memories as a 6 year old is watching the IC tear the line out from Farmersville to Glen Carbon. It was nice seeing the traffic come through town, as they stopped running freight over the line for a few years prior, but when they started attaching chains to the engines and using them to pull out the rails, I was less amused I am surprised my young psyche ever survived. Ever since then, the IC has held a certain mystique to me. Gabe
Originally posted by BaltACD Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:25 AM A long reply, which may ask more questions than it answers[8)]. [:)][:)][:)] Gabe, you asked several challenging questions in your original posting, with more to follow. I do perceive a lack of “core” questions that might have been addressed by others prior to in-depth discussion of turbinage, demurrage, etc. I am certainly grateful for the many, many intelligent and informed answers and comments you received; therefore so please don't think I'm being patronizing if I play this a little bit along the “For Dummies [like me!] approach….. ”The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities.” I agree with everyone about the basic trade-off between speed and cost (which, in RRing, often stems from the trade-off between speed and TORQUE.). Coal is a great example of the freight that's not in a hurry. If you can put it on something slick (the Mississippi River, the Teneessee-Tombigbee Waterway) that actually is moving the way you want it to go, then that's about the cheapest of all. Don't look for barges to disappear anytime soon; in fact, barge-makers’ stock has begun going up. Second cheap, of course, is dragging it over water—such as exporting coal down the aforementioned waterways to South America (Or maybe I’m just worked up over those soft-core coal-mining vixen in the GE commercial!) It sounds simple, but it is very high-tech, and along with economies of scale the more high-tech it is, the cheaper. Think of the scene with Marlon Brando unloading bananas in the movie “On the Waterfront” and how that might proceed today. Much less labor-intensive! And, I am compelled to say that other than air, the most expensive is to consolidate it (COFC, TOFC) and put it on something man-made but low in friction: a semi trailer, a scheduled intermodal run. I think everyone's right in that higher fuel costs hurt everyone, but turn out to be a comparative advantage for the RR's over individual or individual-under-contract long-haul truckers. (There was a fascinating article about five weeks ago in THE NEW YORKER about two guys' deadheading fresh, live lobsters from Nova Scotia to UPS' mega-facilities in Memphis, which will now keep the crustaceans alive until their customers call for them. The article is as much about how the shipper becomes the de facto wholesaler as much as it was about two truck drivers avoiding I-81. This makes a point about service bundled into transportation, which I will return later.) If I may give fle***o your concern about the inefficient time lag between China and store shelves, why would, say, Wal-Mart need weeks or months ago (probably weeks) to get its action-figures cued to the new "Star Wars" movie on a slow boat from China and then a moderately expensive drag from Long Beach or wherever to Proviso or wherever then Albany or wherever. I apologize if I missed something, but I didn’t see people making hay out of the fact that these days, the super carriers of goods or petroleum are HUGE--too big for the Panama Canal. So sending out a couple of ships that are merely medium-large to transit the Canal would be inefficient, and much worse would be sending out one of those new whoppers and then intermodal'ing the goods twice across the Isthmus to another waiting super carrier. [Trivia Note: The Genessee-Wyoming owns the Panama Canal Railroad.] So, let’s say I'm Wal-Mart and I want my zillions of cases of Obi-Wan Kenobi figurines to the USA. Even if it were cheaper (and it isn't) to go round either Cape than use a slow boat from China, I suspect reliability is the norm. Nor is it a matter of air-freight being cost-effective when shipping light but small like Obi-Wan figures (up in the air, weight still counts a lot, as well as space.) Wal-Mart will plead that masses of figurines meet “consumer demand,” but try demanding that Wal-Mart ship via DHL the right kind of Obi-Wan for my niece. I wouldn’t think of it; but it isn’t because the doll is no longer profitable. It would be, but not as much as it is now when Wal-Mart has established itself as more than a dominant force but a market-maker Note that store leaders get little if any advance word on what’s coming into the store and have less than no input about what they’d like to see on their own shelves.. Now that twenty-dollar GE iron, also from China. No, nobody’s about to air-freight that ‘cause heavy still matters in air freight and irons – well, they’re heavy as irons (;)[:p]. If it were a new steam-release valve for your new $175 Krups steam iron, it might get air-freighted from New Jersey or Germany or the Far East. Gabe, I didn't think of this until you challenged us re logistics but shipping deadlines, like transportation boxes themselves, can have different "modes." Wal-Mart is in no hurry for the Star-Wars figurines because they started chatting with George. Lucas and friends a good three years ago. Two years ago people (frequently now abroad) were designing them, then W-M bargained with Kenner or Mattel or whomever for specs and product launch (not for nothing do our nation’s largest corporations have big shiny regional hdqtrs as close as possible to Wal-Mart hdqtrs in Bentonville, AR, and the process is more integrated than I’ve made it seen.) Finally, W-M has probably already dealt with the shippers (BNSF, UP, CN) or expediters/logicians (Pacer International, Inc.) a LONG time ago--maybe as much as a year or more. (Point to ponder: does Wal-Mart draw up its own cost-of-fuel contracts to counter the RR lines’ guarantee-of-escalator contracts? Crazy if they don’t.) So a fuel-efficient super carrier takes ten days to a fortnight instead of a week. Who gives a doodle? Wal-Mart’s got the exclusive on Obi-Wan and Barbie, so there’s nobody out there to sneak-release them first. So the Guangzhou-to-Shanghai Railroad is going to triple its track, reducing from 3 days to one the time it takes to traverse the entire main line? Big whoop! (But it will matter for average carless Chinese who will see their trains jump from a 1910s level of speed and comfort to a 1950s.) Also, that extra day or two may come in mighty handy, especially if there’s a typhoon or hurricane to be dodged. Perhaps our shipping mavens will speak to that. So with a combination of reliability, planning and bargaining for the most efficient and cheapest routing, those Obi-Wan Kenobis and Barbies and that wonderful $20 GE iron, all from China with their pennies-on-the-dollar-and-you'd-better-like-it labor, at Wal-Mart, can be so INCREDIBLY cheap! My hunch is that Wal-Mart, after hitching their wagon many years ago to Messrs. Lucas and colleagues, operates on fairly pessimistic supply-and-transportation paradigms, because the figurines, much to this Uncle's consternation, always seem to wind up in the stores about five weeks ahead of the movie premier. So why doesn't Wal-Mart hold the items at its (global) intake facilities or ports, or at its (regional) warehouses? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. And that's the mixed blessing of "just-in-time" inventory. Nothing can sit still! (Canadian National's 2004 report very cleverly has as its cover photograph an empty rail yard, and inside the caption explains that all CN's motive power and rolling stock are out there earning money, not idling away at the yard.) So that’s the devil in the details: if the stuff is punctual and not damaged (however slow) that’s fine, as long as it’s punctual. Punctuality counts too, once the goods enter Wal-Mart’s custody. But for slightly different reasons: not only is at (1) too “hot” an inventory environment these days to cool things by lying around US warehouses or pay demurrage or whatever; but (2) whenever Obi-Wan shows up, even if it’s five weeks early, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will do its best (sans heroics) to make sure that the figurines in Portland, OR don’t arrive that much earlier than those destined for Portland, ME. So slow-boat from China is one mode, and TOFC, stacks or daredevil trucking teams are another shipping urgency—one of the concepts of intermodality is, in fact, that things like schedules that seem counterintuitive on the surface really aren’t once an understanding is reached that ASAP is good for some situations and not others, and it almost always costs more. Let’s not assign morality to transportation: It isn’t the least bit “hypocritical” to take ultra-slow crossing of the Pacific with medium-to-very fast ground shipping here at home. It’s the consolidated results that matter; as I keep stressing reliability as well as a coherent cost. Perhaps instead of asking “Why is intermodal so fast” you might have asked, “Why can’t everything be as fast, ASAP?” Which gets me to unit trains. Gabe, I don’t think your idea of speeding up unit trains is a great one, for reasons that have been touched on as well as a couple of new ones. First, in the eternal struggle between torque and speed, “patient” coal or iron filings or gardener’s stone (but mostly coal), it’s best to sacrifice speed for torque. And that’s why the unit coal trains I see in Rochelle, Ill., headed for places like Wisconsin Power are pulled by a two or three frequently begrimed and old (probably all-DC) units, with perhaps a pusher on the end. A power plant is a great example about a service/industry that doesn’t have to worry too much (barring strikes, fuel shortages, inflation!) about what it needs—it needs the specified coal, it needs to be absolutely sure enough is on hand at all time, and (a luxury in today’s just-in-time era) it probably has a pile or two of “patient” coal out back (again coal supplies, unlike Omaha Steaks or Obi-Wan, don’t mind getting dumped on the ground and even snowed on a little). So, for a coal unit train the operating rate of speed has a lot to do with money, and possibly also a lot to do with local politics. According to figures (a couple of years old, I admit) from the DM&E, it takes two and-a-half minutes for 120 cars of an empty unit train to pass by a crossing at 40-45 mph. Make that 150 cars of laden coal train with a speed below 35 – it may be the cheapest in terms of fuel to go at 20 but a third more cars and almost two-thirds less speed is simply unacceptable. Even a third more cars and only a third less speed (35 mph) is pretty wearing. Studies have shown that citizens are OK about waiting for a slow train at a grade crossing for up to that 2.5 minutes, but at about three (all of 30 sec. later) they start getting antsy and they REALLY heat up after four! For more background, Google for “DM&E,” “Schieffer” “unit trains” and “Rochester, Minnesota.” I suppose with today’s huge, usually hump-free and LONG logistics centers, the Class One’s could probably marshal up 200-car unit trains. Bad idea! Even if three weekly dumps at that Wisconsin power plant would equal the tonnage of five Mon-Fri 120-yard trains, consider that: (1) incremental savings would be slight; (2) the electric co. likes to hear the reassuring thunder of coal every working day; and (3) most of all, it would be totally unacceptable to folks in places like Rochester, MN and smaller communities like Rochelle, IL, where grade crossings are the norm. Moral: for unit trains don’t think “wayward shuttle,” think “Berlin Airlift.” And, with today’s longer sidings, several coal trains in motion will not “clog” the system. Thank modern CTC. I think the people who spoke before me are using their transportation expertise and common sense and rightly judged consumer goods to be in an intermediate position of urgency between unit train and UPS. UPS intrigues me. Lots and lots of TOFC with the UPS label pounds over that double diamond at Rochelle, Illinois, mostly BNSF but some UP; and once in a while, when such trains are running slower than their usual 50-ish mph, I can hear machinery humming and see fans whirling in some of the UPS trailers. Is it a ventilator? Or is it even possible for generator/alternator to summon up enough power to run refrigerated or frozen? (I’m not talking about fridge cars, mind.) For that matter, when I have Amazon books shipped at their cheapest level of delivery, that usually involves separate shipments, all of which I could track out of Seattle or northern Nevada (near Reno, I think); and the same for my Tampa cigars that routed through Jacksonville, FL, then Lexington, KY, then Dolton, IL (south suburban Chicago). For the most part, I no longer can; instead I receive a cold but correct computer message to the effect that “You’re not a corporate shipper so all we’re going to tell you now is that your order is scheduled to get to you on time.” Could UP be marshalling up parcel trains at Global III to head into Chicago? Or BNSF sending their stuff—it’s quite possible—all the way downtown in Chicago to that huge UPS hub? The stuff is frequently late (but it was frequently late when it checked into Chicagoland at Dolton, having come up the Interstates by their trucks). Could it be that some company like Pacer, International is routing the stuff by rail? (Interesting company; I have their 2004 Annual Report in hand. Made a ton of money last year, and, if “non-asset-based” means what I think it does, they don’t even own most of those pretty blue Pacer/Stacktrain mods.) Perhaps the transport pros would like to speak of the phenomena of service companies like Pacer (again with the service!). The chain of supply under "just-in-time" regimes may indeed be too tight. On the other hand, new technologies have brought new cost efficiencies to shippers. This is Rochelle scuttlebutt, but it's probably true: the local farmers can get a dime more a bushel for their corn (a not inconsiderable amount) if they bring it straight to the railhead itself and not to the local elevator! Ah, a new kind of service--or even if it's foregoing service, there's a calculable saving! Oh brave new world...[:0] In closing, who among our ocean-transportation experts can recommend the biggest trans-Pacific companies? I have an A.R. from Alexander & Baldwin, but doubt that that is anywhere near the biggest carrier, except possibly to Hawaii. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:10 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous. a). Because the ocean going liners don't have to compete with trucks? A "slow boat from china" is still a slow boat from china ...no matter who pilots it. Whereas once the containers hit terra firma the green flag falls b). Volume: if you are a merchant expecting 20 containers full of merchandise, you probably have very little control on selecting one overseas container company over the other, IN THE CONTEXT OF SPEED, and as such a small customer you are not going to be able to command priority routing from the ship. However, once the containers are on land, you can barter with the devil all you want as far as who is willing to promise you what, with those contending forced to butt heads on details. and. c). timing... Perhaps after HAVING to wait for that slow boat from china to make it's 30 day transit...the welled up anticipation of customers waiting for their goods makes that last 4 hour differential transit time all the more critical? If you've been forced to wait for your order for 30 days already, which is better to the impatient mentality? waiting 1 day longer or 2 days longer to take delivery. You put the pressure on the point you can actually control... Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:14 PM Good points all, Mr. AntiGates. As an individual, I would get very antsy waiting -- is it really close to a month? -- for goods to cross the Pacific. As a cold (or at least value-neutral) institution like Wal-Mart (or Target, or Home Depot, Menard's, etc.), I'm not sure my employees would individually get close enough to large-scale freight movement to really impose a time-frame on and worry or care much about any particular movement--with obvious exceptions, of course, like buyers who have had to keep their own special info about CD's and toys, etc., to themselves for the good of the company. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:22 PM Antigates, I am not saying your wrong. I am way to ignorant on this subject to make such a bombastic statement. However, it just seems to me that you are missing my premise. I know what you are saying about steamships not having to compete with truckers. But, what I am saying, is that is an irrelevant red herring. Futuremodal, Greyhounds, Oltmand, MP173, and others have given me good explanations that, at the very least, shed light on my conundrum. However, I still stick to my initial premise that--absent some of the other reasons referenced above--truck competition with steamships vel non, it makes absolutely no sense to me to pay a dollar more for freight to have it arive in one month and 4 hours instead of one month and 11 hours. It seems irrelevant to me that steamships aren't competing with trucks, all that really matters is the infintesible difference reflected in the bottom line. Gabe Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:42 PM Gabe: What if the real difference between one month and 4 hours vs one month and 11 hours is an arrival time of 6 AM for the former vs 1 PM for the latter? Makes a big difference if the former allows stock to be placed on shelves while the latter makes you wait one day. In this case, the difference of 7 hours turns into a difference of 24 hours. In reality, except for the short haul lanes, the 20 mph max speed difference in your original example tends to translate into days, not just hours, for the longer haul corridors. Statistically speaking, the more expediently you get on down the road will lessen the likelyhood of delays such as crews going dead before the next crew change, having to go in the hole for UPS-TOFC, etc. It was stated best when it was stated, "Why does everything else have to move so slow?". Reply Edit Jack_S Member sinceDecember 2004 339 posts Posted by Jack_S on Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:02 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe One point to be looked at is the number of containers that pass a given point in one time interval. Yes, ships are slow but they carry a incredible number of containers compared to a train. And they are moving 24/7. So they carry a larger number past any given waypoint than a train can even at a higher speed. The big problem is not to go fast, it is to prevent going very slow or stopping. In that the ports are the big obstacle. But the basic reason the RRs run that fast is simply that some customers will pay more if they do. The customers have a time problem: they perceive a market for something and order it. If it takes too long to get the goods to the stores, the fickle market may disappear and they will be left holding the bag. So they are willing to pay extra to reduce shipping time even by a matter of a few days. Jack Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:32 AM **Ahem.. customers expecting freight of whatever kind are usually on THIER own schedule. For example.. Kroger foods wants your meat load delivered onto their dock by 11 AM in some locations so they can ship that evening. If you dont make that 11 AM cut off, you are likely to lose that day, the next day and have to catch up with trying to find a load once you did get empty. Ships want trucks and trains to take thier burden off. I sometimes wonder how many HO Scale Precision Craft Models are on the way across the Pacific as we type this thread? Reply Edit edblysard Member sinceMarch 2002 9,265 posts Posted by edblysard on Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:42 AM Well, Answer a question with a question... Why, after such a long and time comsuming trip, would they be in such a hurry to unload the ship after it docks? After all, it took forever to get here, right? Because they have to turn the ship back, and head out to get more containers... Why run a container train so fast? Because, the number of cars available to move the containers is limited, and less than the number of containers needing to move, there are more containers on the way, in a continious loop... How long the containers take to arive at the port is irrelevent to the railroad, the fact that there will alway be more, arriving hourly, is what drives the speed of the trains up. I dont care how long it takes a grain train to arrive here, but I do care how long it sits in my receiving track, because every hour it sits there is one more hour the next train due has to wait to get in, and there is another train behind that one, and another, and another...how long it took them to get here dosnt matter to me, how long they sit here in the way does. The rush isn't so much about whats in the containers, but is about how long they occupy my tracks...the in-flow of the containers is constant, there is how many hundreds of ships headed this way? The cars, crews and locomotives needs to move them is also constant, and less then the volume of the containers. So my ability to move the containers is limited, unlike the ships, I have a fixed in place structure to move on, so speed equals volume, which equals profit. Ed 23 17 46 11 Reply 1234 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. 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Originally posted by Murphy Siding Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR Austin TX Sub Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:25 AM A long reply, which may ask more questions than it answers[8)]. [:)][:)][:)] Gabe, you asked several challenging questions in your original posting, with more to follow. I do perceive a lack of “core” questions that might have been addressed by others prior to in-depth discussion of turbinage, demurrage, etc. I am certainly grateful for the many, many intelligent and informed answers and comments you received; therefore so please don't think I'm being patronizing if I play this a little bit along the “For Dummies [like me!] approach….. ”The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities.” I agree with everyone about the basic trade-off between speed and cost (which, in RRing, often stems from the trade-off between speed and TORQUE.). Coal is a great example of the freight that's not in a hurry. If you can put it on something slick (the Mississippi River, the Teneessee-Tombigbee Waterway) that actually is moving the way you want it to go, then that's about the cheapest of all. Don't look for barges to disappear anytime soon; in fact, barge-makers’ stock has begun going up. Second cheap, of course, is dragging it over water—such as exporting coal down the aforementioned waterways to South America (Or maybe I’m just worked up over those soft-core coal-mining vixen in the GE commercial!) It sounds simple, but it is very high-tech, and along with economies of scale the more high-tech it is, the cheaper. Think of the scene with Marlon Brando unloading bananas in the movie “On the Waterfront” and how that might proceed today. Much less labor-intensive! And, I am compelled to say that other than air, the most expensive is to consolidate it (COFC, TOFC) and put it on something man-made but low in friction: a semi trailer, a scheduled intermodal run. I think everyone's right in that higher fuel costs hurt everyone, but turn out to be a comparative advantage for the RR's over individual or individual-under-contract long-haul truckers. (There was a fascinating article about five weeks ago in THE NEW YORKER about two guys' deadheading fresh, live lobsters from Nova Scotia to UPS' mega-facilities in Memphis, which will now keep the crustaceans alive until their customers call for them. The article is as much about how the shipper becomes the de facto wholesaler as much as it was about two truck drivers avoiding I-81. This makes a point about service bundled into transportation, which I will return later.) If I may give fle***o your concern about the inefficient time lag between China and store shelves, why would, say, Wal-Mart need weeks or months ago (probably weeks) to get its action-figures cued to the new "Star Wars" movie on a slow boat from China and then a moderately expensive drag from Long Beach or wherever to Proviso or wherever then Albany or wherever. I apologize if I missed something, but I didn’t see people making hay out of the fact that these days, the super carriers of goods or petroleum are HUGE--too big for the Panama Canal. So sending out a couple of ships that are merely medium-large to transit the Canal would be inefficient, and much worse would be sending out one of those new whoppers and then intermodal'ing the goods twice across the Isthmus to another waiting super carrier. [Trivia Note: The Genessee-Wyoming owns the Panama Canal Railroad.] So, let’s say I'm Wal-Mart and I want my zillions of cases of Obi-Wan Kenobi figurines to the USA. Even if it were cheaper (and it isn't) to go round either Cape than use a slow boat from China, I suspect reliability is the norm. Nor is it a matter of air-freight being cost-effective when shipping light but small like Obi-Wan figures (up in the air, weight still counts a lot, as well as space.) Wal-Mart will plead that masses of figurines meet “consumer demand,” but try demanding that Wal-Mart ship via DHL the right kind of Obi-Wan for my niece. I wouldn’t think of it; but it isn’t because the doll is no longer profitable. It would be, but not as much as it is now when Wal-Mart has established itself as more than a dominant force but a market-maker Note that store leaders get little if any advance word on what’s coming into the store and have less than no input about what they’d like to see on their own shelves.. Now that twenty-dollar GE iron, also from China. No, nobody’s about to air-freight that ‘cause heavy still matters in air freight and irons – well, they’re heavy as irons (;)[:p]. If it were a new steam-release valve for your new $175 Krups steam iron, it might get air-freighted from New Jersey or Germany or the Far East. Gabe, I didn't think of this until you challenged us re logistics but shipping deadlines, like transportation boxes themselves, can have different "modes." Wal-Mart is in no hurry for the Star-Wars figurines because they started chatting with George. Lucas and friends a good three years ago. Two years ago people (frequently now abroad) were designing them, then W-M bargained with Kenner or Mattel or whomever for specs and product launch (not for nothing do our nation’s largest corporations have big shiny regional hdqtrs as close as possible to Wal-Mart hdqtrs in Bentonville, AR, and the process is more integrated than I’ve made it seen.) Finally, W-M has probably already dealt with the shippers (BNSF, UP, CN) or expediters/logicians (Pacer International, Inc.) a LONG time ago--maybe as much as a year or more. (Point to ponder: does Wal-Mart draw up its own cost-of-fuel contracts to counter the RR lines’ guarantee-of-escalator contracts? Crazy if they don’t.) So a fuel-efficient super carrier takes ten days to a fortnight instead of a week. Who gives a doodle? Wal-Mart’s got the exclusive on Obi-Wan and Barbie, so there’s nobody out there to sneak-release them first. So the Guangzhou-to-Shanghai Railroad is going to triple its track, reducing from 3 days to one the time it takes to traverse the entire main line? Big whoop! (But it will matter for average carless Chinese who will see their trains jump from a 1910s level of speed and comfort to a 1950s.) Also, that extra day or two may come in mighty handy, especially if there’s a typhoon or hurricane to be dodged. Perhaps our shipping mavens will speak to that. So with a combination of reliability, planning and bargaining for the most efficient and cheapest routing, those Obi-Wan Kenobis and Barbies and that wonderful $20 GE iron, all from China with their pennies-on-the-dollar-and-you'd-better-like-it labor, at Wal-Mart, can be so INCREDIBLY cheap! My hunch is that Wal-Mart, after hitching their wagon many years ago to Messrs. Lucas and colleagues, operates on fairly pessimistic supply-and-transportation paradigms, because the figurines, much to this Uncle's consternation, always seem to wind up in the stores about five weeks ahead of the movie premier. So why doesn't Wal-Mart hold the items at its (global) intake facilities or ports, or at its (regional) warehouses? BECAUSE THEY CAN'T. And that's the mixed blessing of "just-in-time" inventory. Nothing can sit still! (Canadian National's 2004 report very cleverly has as its cover photograph an empty rail yard, and inside the caption explains that all CN's motive power and rolling stock are out there earning money, not idling away at the yard.) So that’s the devil in the details: if the stuff is punctual and not damaged (however slow) that’s fine, as long as it’s punctual. Punctuality counts too, once the goods enter Wal-Mart’s custody. But for slightly different reasons: not only is at (1) too “hot” an inventory environment these days to cool things by lying around US warehouses or pay demurrage or whatever; but (2) whenever Obi-Wan shows up, even if it’s five weeks early, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will do its best (sans heroics) to make sure that the figurines in Portland, OR don’t arrive that much earlier than those destined for Portland, ME. So slow-boat from China is one mode, and TOFC, stacks or daredevil trucking teams are another shipping urgency—one of the concepts of intermodality is, in fact, that things like schedules that seem counterintuitive on the surface really aren’t once an understanding is reached that ASAP is good for some situations and not others, and it almost always costs more. Let’s not assign morality to transportation: It isn’t the least bit “hypocritical” to take ultra-slow crossing of the Pacific with medium-to-very fast ground shipping here at home. It’s the consolidated results that matter; as I keep stressing reliability as well as a coherent cost. Perhaps instead of asking “Why is intermodal so fast” you might have asked, “Why can’t everything be as fast, ASAP?” Which gets me to unit trains. Gabe, I don’t think your idea of speeding up unit trains is a great one, for reasons that have been touched on as well as a couple of new ones. First, in the eternal struggle between torque and speed, “patient” coal or iron filings or gardener’s stone (but mostly coal), it’s best to sacrifice speed for torque. And that’s why the unit coal trains I see in Rochelle, Ill., headed for places like Wisconsin Power are pulled by a two or three frequently begrimed and old (probably all-DC) units, with perhaps a pusher on the end. A power plant is a great example about a service/industry that doesn’t have to worry too much (barring strikes, fuel shortages, inflation!) about what it needs—it needs the specified coal, it needs to be absolutely sure enough is on hand at all time, and (a luxury in today’s just-in-time era) it probably has a pile or two of “patient” coal out back (again coal supplies, unlike Omaha Steaks or Obi-Wan, don’t mind getting dumped on the ground and even snowed on a little). So, for a coal unit train the operating rate of speed has a lot to do with money, and possibly also a lot to do with local politics. According to figures (a couple of years old, I admit) from the DM&E, it takes two and-a-half minutes for 120 cars of an empty unit train to pass by a crossing at 40-45 mph. Make that 150 cars of laden coal train with a speed below 35 – it may be the cheapest in terms of fuel to go at 20 but a third more cars and almost two-thirds less speed is simply unacceptable. Even a third more cars and only a third less speed (35 mph) is pretty wearing. Studies have shown that citizens are OK about waiting for a slow train at a grade crossing for up to that 2.5 minutes, but at about three (all of 30 sec. later) they start getting antsy and they REALLY heat up after four! For more background, Google for “DM&E,” “Schieffer” “unit trains” and “Rochester, Minnesota.” I suppose with today’s huge, usually hump-free and LONG logistics centers, the Class One’s could probably marshal up 200-car unit trains. Bad idea! Even if three weekly dumps at that Wisconsin power plant would equal the tonnage of five Mon-Fri 120-yard trains, consider that: (1) incremental savings would be slight; (2) the electric co. likes to hear the reassuring thunder of coal every working day; and (3) most of all, it would be totally unacceptable to folks in places like Rochester, MN and smaller communities like Rochelle, IL, where grade crossings are the norm. Moral: for unit trains don’t think “wayward shuttle,” think “Berlin Airlift.” And, with today’s longer sidings, several coal trains in motion will not “clog” the system. Thank modern CTC. I think the people who spoke before me are using their transportation expertise and common sense and rightly judged consumer goods to be in an intermediate position of urgency between unit train and UPS. UPS intrigues me. Lots and lots of TOFC with the UPS label pounds over that double diamond at Rochelle, Illinois, mostly BNSF but some UP; and once in a while, when such trains are running slower than their usual 50-ish mph, I can hear machinery humming and see fans whirling in some of the UPS trailers. Is it a ventilator? Or is it even possible for generator/alternator to summon up enough power to run refrigerated or frozen? (I’m not talking about fridge cars, mind.) For that matter, when I have Amazon books shipped at their cheapest level of delivery, that usually involves separate shipments, all of which I could track out of Seattle or northern Nevada (near Reno, I think); and the same for my Tampa cigars that routed through Jacksonville, FL, then Lexington, KY, then Dolton, IL (south suburban Chicago). For the most part, I no longer can; instead I receive a cold but correct computer message to the effect that “You’re not a corporate shipper so all we’re going to tell you now is that your order is scheduled to get to you on time.” Could UP be marshalling up parcel trains at Global III to head into Chicago? Or BNSF sending their stuff—it’s quite possible—all the way downtown in Chicago to that huge UPS hub? The stuff is frequently late (but it was frequently late when it checked into Chicagoland at Dolton, having come up the Interstates by their trucks). Could it be that some company like Pacer, International is routing the stuff by rail? (Interesting company; I have their 2004 Annual Report in hand. Made a ton of money last year, and, if “non-asset-based” means what I think it does, they don’t even own most of those pretty blue Pacer/Stacktrain mods.) Perhaps the transport pros would like to speak of the phenomena of service companies like Pacer (again with the service!). The chain of supply under "just-in-time" regimes may indeed be too tight. On the other hand, new technologies have brought new cost efficiencies to shippers. This is Rochelle scuttlebutt, but it's probably true: the local farmers can get a dime more a bushel for their corn (a not inconsiderable amount) if they bring it straight to the railhead itself and not to the local elevator! Ah, a new kind of service--or even if it's foregoing service, there's a calculable saving! Oh brave new world...[:0] In closing, who among our ocean-transportation experts can recommend the biggest trans-Pacific companies? I have an A.R. from Alexander & Baldwin, but doubt that that is anywhere near the biggest carrier, except possibly to Hawaii. Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:10 PM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous. a). Because the ocean going liners don't have to compete with trucks? A "slow boat from china" is still a slow boat from china ...no matter who pilots it. Whereas once the containers hit terra firma the green flag falls b). Volume: if you are a merchant expecting 20 containers full of merchandise, you probably have very little control on selecting one overseas container company over the other, IN THE CONTEXT OF SPEED, and as such a small customer you are not going to be able to command priority routing from the ship. However, once the containers are on land, you can barter with the devil all you want as far as who is willing to promise you what, with those contending forced to butt heads on details. and. c). timing... Perhaps after HAVING to wait for that slow boat from china to make it's 30 day transit...the welled up anticipation of customers waiting for their goods makes that last 4 hour differential transit time all the more critical? If you've been forced to wait for your order for 30 days already, which is better to the impatient mentality? waiting 1 day longer or 2 days longer to take delivery. You put the pressure on the point you can actually control... Reply Edit Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:14 PM Good points all, Mr. AntiGates. As an individual, I would get very antsy waiting -- is it really close to a month? -- for goods to cross the Pacific. As a cold (or at least value-neutral) institution like Wal-Mart (or Target, or Home Depot, Menard's, etc.), I'm not sure my employees would individually get close enough to large-scale freight movement to really impose a time-frame on and worry or care much about any particular movement--with obvious exceptions, of course, like buyers who have had to keep their own special info about CD's and toys, etc., to themselves for the good of the company. Reply Edit gabe Member sinceMarch 2004 From: Indianapolis, Indiana 2,434 posts Posted by gabe on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:22 PM Antigates, I am not saying your wrong. I am way to ignorant on this subject to make such a bombastic statement. However, it just seems to me that you are missing my premise. I know what you are saying about steamships not having to compete with truckers. But, what I am saying, is that is an irrelevant red herring. Futuremodal, Greyhounds, Oltmand, MP173, and others have given me good explanations that, at the very least, shed light on my conundrum. However, I still stick to my initial premise that--absent some of the other reasons referenced above--truck competition with steamships vel non, it makes absolutely no sense to me to pay a dollar more for freight to have it arive in one month and 4 hours instead of one month and 11 hours. It seems irrelevant to me that steamships aren't competing with trucks, all that really matters is the infintesible difference reflected in the bottom line. Gabe Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, June 18, 2005 11:42 PM Gabe: What if the real difference between one month and 4 hours vs one month and 11 hours is an arrival time of 6 AM for the former vs 1 PM for the latter? Makes a big difference if the former allows stock to be placed on shelves while the latter makes you wait one day. In this case, the difference of 7 hours turns into a difference of 24 hours. In reality, except for the short haul lanes, the 20 mph max speed difference in your original example tends to translate into days, not just hours, for the longer haul corridors. Statistically speaking, the more expediently you get on down the road will lessen the likelyhood of delays such as crews going dead before the next crew change, having to go in the hole for UPS-TOFC, etc. It was stated best when it was stated, "Why does everything else have to move so slow?". Reply Edit Jack_S Member sinceDecember 2004 339 posts Posted by Jack_S on Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:02 AM QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe One point to be looked at is the number of containers that pass a given point in one time interval. Yes, ships are slow but they carry a incredible number of containers compared to a train. And they are moving 24/7. So they carry a larger number past any given waypoint than a train can even at a higher speed. The big problem is not to go fast, it is to prevent going very slow or stopping. In that the ports are the big obstacle. But the basic reason the RRs run that fast is simply that some customers will pay more if they do. The customers have a time problem: they perceive a market for something and order it. If it takes too long to get the goods to the stores, the fickle market may disappear and they will be left holding the bag. So they are willing to pay extra to reduce shipping time even by a matter of a few days. Jack Reply Anonymous Member sinceApril 2003 305,205 posts Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, June 19, 2005 4:32 AM **Ahem.. customers expecting freight of whatever kind are usually on THIER own schedule. For example.. Kroger foods wants your meat load delivered onto their dock by 11 AM in some locations so they can ship that evening. If you dont make that 11 AM cut off, you are likely to lose that day, the next day and have to catch up with trying to find a load once you did get empty. Ships want trucks and trains to take thier burden off. I sometimes wonder how many HO Scale Precision Craft Models are on the way across the Pacific as we type this thread? Reply Edit edblysard Member sinceMarch 2002 9,265 posts Posted by edblysard on Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:42 AM Well, Answer a question with a question... Why, after such a long and time comsuming trip, would they be in such a hurry to unload the ship after it docks? After all, it took forever to get here, right? Because they have to turn the ship back, and head out to get more containers... Why run a container train so fast? Because, the number of cars available to move the containers is limited, and less than the number of containers needing to move, there are more containers on the way, in a continious loop... How long the containers take to arive at the port is irrelevent to the railroad, the fact that there will alway be more, arriving hourly, is what drives the speed of the trains up. I dont care how long it takes a grain train to arrive here, but I do care how long it sits in my receiving track, because every hour it sits there is one more hour the next train due has to wait to get in, and there is another train behind that one, and another, and another...how long it took them to get here dosnt matter to me, how long they sit here in the way does. The rush isn't so much about whats in the containers, but is about how long they occupy my tracks...the in-flow of the containers is constant, there is how many hundreds of ships headed this way? The cars, crews and locomotives needs to move them is also constant, and less then the volume of the containers. So my ability to move the containers is limited, unlike the ships, I have a fixed in place structure to move on, so speed equals volume, which equals profit. Ed 23 17 46 11 Reply 1234 Join our Community! Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account. 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QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place. OK, to restate my premise: Say a fast intermodal or truck's speed of 60 mph makes the 1000 mile transit in 17 hours. Whereas the train's speed of 45 mph makes the trip in 22 hours. Why on earth would the 5 hours amount to a drop in the bucket when compared to the WEEKS that is took to get the container on the train. So what if trucks or a fast train gets it there 5-7 hours faster? It is still a 5-7 hour difference on a container that would take at least a week to get from the factory in China to the train. At best, you are looking at a 32/33rds difference in time, and I think that is being very generous.
QUOTE: Originally posted by StillGrande Because they are trying to keep service comparable to a truck going 75 on a highway to the same place.
QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe
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