Empty Freight Car Question

[Anonymous]

I'm curious about railroad customers recieving empty freight cars.
If a customer wants to ship, say, a box car load of product, do they call and ask for a specific railroad's box car, or does the railroad that drops off the box car just drop off any empty box car it has available?
I ask this because I see lots of freight cars with slogans on them (Be Specific, Ship Union Pacific; Santa Fe, All The Way), and always wondered how a company shipping it's freight used a certain railroad.
Have I confused anyone yet?

John

[wabash1]

when i worked the local the grain elevators would call in and ask for cars , they asked for certain cars depending on where it was going. they had there own cars for special consignee couse they didnt pay as much for the haul using their own cars. for other customers they got ns big johns it paid us more.

[edblysard]

If I needed cars, I would call the railroad that serves my area, contact their shipping agent. He(or she) would arrange for the corect number of empties to be spoted at my plant. Lets say I make plastic pellets. Well, BNSF has a holding yard full of empties, and I need ten cars. They have their crew pull the 10 cars, and set them out in a siding for the next train coming to the yard nearest my plant. There, a switch crew brings the empties to my palnt, we load them, and the next day( or whatever time frame we agree on) they pull the cars. Take them back to their yard, cut them into the next outboud train heading towards the city of the person who purchased my plastic. Lets say that buyer is only serviced by UP. Somewhere along the way, BN and UP use a yard to interchange cars, and BN hands off my plastic hoppers to UP. They haul them the rest of the way to my buyer, and go through some what of the reverse process mentioned at first. Lets say it was a 50/50 deal, BN half way, UP/ the rest. At the outset, the agent for BN would have quoted me the price of shipping, including the cost of having UP do half the job. Through a very complicated series or rates, charges, and the really weird railroad math, a final cost to me is given. BN bills me, UP bills BN, so fort and so on. As to a specific railroads boxcar staying on its home road, it dosent happen any more, most of the time the cars are in a pool service, so say where I work, the rice shipper needs ten boxcars. The first ten empties we have, regardless of whos name is on them, are pulled from the hold track and spotted at his plant. The reporting marks tell our clerks who gets paid for which cars, most of the time the cars are owned by a lessor, a division of whatever railroads name is on the boxcar. Say it a UP box, well, UP dosnt own it outright, they have company set up for that purpose. Kinda a legal ENRON thing...Or take the Railbox system, reporting make RBOX######, the railroads got together and purchased these cars, formed their own pool service, and share the profits depending on who used what. Trailer train, TTX, is a consortium of railroads for the same purpose, flatcars by the hour so to speak. The benefit for the roads is they dont own the cars, and each one dosnt have to mantain it own fleet. TTX bill each rr for the use and mantainance of the cars in the pool based on usage. Use more cars longer, pay more, only use a few? pay less. If your rr dosnt use flatcars but once or twice a year, why own a bunch of them when you can "lease" them from TTX?
As to using a specific rr, here in houston there is a terminal road all the most of the class 1 road deliver. We have a yard where BN & UP drop off and pick up cars. We are a "netural" road, we dont give preference to one or the other. We serve both sides of the houston ship channel, over 400 industries. If you want to ship BN, your clerk tell our clerk, and when we pull your plant, we add those cars to the BN outbound. We charge the same rate to all the "member" lines to perform this service for them, eliminates two or more rr trying to build competing lines in limited space to serve the same customers. So you can receive cars that came in on UP, but they may end up leaving on BN. Most cities who have the volume of rail traffic we do, have somewhat the same set up. New Orleans Public Belt, Chicago Belt RR, Houston's PTRA, (port terminal railroad assocation) or a local or regional road which performes the same service.
Have I confused you even more, or is it a clear as mud now?

[Anonymous]

As with all thing railroad, it's as clear as mud!
It kind of seems like, "you'll get what cars you get...and you'll like it."

John

[edblysard]

Well, the shipper has the right to "bad order" a car they dont feel is safy, or suitable, or a fra defect. But then they end up short a car...

[BRAKIE]

That would also apply to truck trailers as well.If a shipping manager feels that the trailer is not safe(bad tires,holes,doors,door locks dirty floor)he has a right to refuse the trailer..A forklift operator as the right to refuse to load a trailer he/she feels is unsafe to drive on,this would contain mostly to the condition of the floor and dolleys.( the dolleys only if the trailer is dropped at the dock)

Note: If the load has shifted in a trailer or boxcar the load can be refuse if it is to dangerous to unload by forklift or by hand.This does not happen to often,but it has been known to happen in the past.

[Anonymous]

Ed, you need to sit down and write a book.For the first time I understand how the system works.I alway's wonderd why big railroads got together to form small railroads in big cities. It now makes sence why I will see a railroad not spotting there own cars in industrial parks. Thanks for the education.
TIM A

[edblysard]

Your right, and the shipper dosnt care whos name is on the car, only if the car is suitable for his product. He will pay the same whether it says UP, BNSF or Tex Mex. He really dosnt car so long as it arrives when he needs it , leaves when its full, and gets there when the customer wants it. We routinly bad order tilters in our yard, we even have a certain track we put them in so the shipper can arrange to have someone come reload or correct the problem.

[edblysard]

Hey Tim, you might check Trains magazine. About two years ago, they published a story on the PTRA, (Port Terminal Railroad Assocation). When it was formed in 1924, ther was over 18 different Class 1 Railroads with main lines into Houston. Imagine the mess if they all tried to lay tracks to the city docks, and along the Houston Ship Channel. The story in Trains also had info on some other "terminal" roads, and at one time there was an article on the New Orleans Public Belt...Class 1s will pull and spot customers if they are on line, with a spur off the railroads main line. Big customers, Post cereal, G.M and Ford, US Parcel and FedEx even get their own trains, run daliy, sometimes per the customers work shifts in their plants. We have two customers, Shell peterolum and Lubrizoil Lubricants that we run a train just for them, around 100 cars, twice daily.
And to add to that, ever here the term SIT, applied to railcars? It means storage in transit. Plastic shippers make huge quanties of plastic pellets, in several types of plastic. It cheaper for them to "rent" a plastics hopper, fill it with that shifts output, and then have the railroad pull and store the car Than it would be for them to build a storage facility.We store the cars in a dedicated yard, know here as a sit yard. When someone buy a couple of thousand tons of a certain type of plastic, the manufactur has us pull the car containing that plastic and put it on whoevers outbound. The plastic maker pays for the storage, rents the car, pays for our pulling and spoting, and it still works out cheaper than if they tried to store it themselvs. What a country!

[BRAKIE]

I will also state that applies to trailers owned by truck lines as well.Some of those can be in sad shape.

[Anonymous]

Being a truck driver myself, I know exactly how it is.

[edblysard]

My father in law owns two Freightliners, and he will refuse a load in a heartbeat if he thinks its not loaded properly, of if the trailer is in sad shape. Here in Houston, the H.P.D. has an eighteen wheeler task force that does nothing else but stop and inspect tractor trailer rigs for safty violations, shifted loads, no operating air brakes, ect. Youve been there before, Im sure. And not only does the trailers owner get fined, the driver does too. Who wants to pay for some eles indiffrence?

[Anonymous]

I agree with you Ed up here in the midwest we have that real large city called Chicago there are several short lines owned by the big class 1`s one of them is the BRC i.e. the Belt Railway of Chicago the other one is the IHB Indiana Harbor Blet which is owened by the CSX & NS on the BNSF we run into both of these yards. Sorry to say it I would rather see more trains running than see all of the trucks clogging the highways yes I am partial to the train because they can haul more freight per car than a semi. Rodney conductor BNSF Chicago Division

[edblysard]

I think I have heard of that place before, its the city with a really cool pasanger station, and it used to have a whole bunch of railroads into it.
Hey, hows the mexican food there?
And yeah, I kinda like trains myself. Besides, if the public realized what was in some of those tank trucks driving right beside them on the freeway, they would have a fit.
Ed, Switchman/foreman, Port Terminal Railroad Assocation, Houston, Texas.

[Anonymous]

Me, I haul mail from the distribution center to the local post offices. I work for a good company that keeps on top of things. The company I used to work for never fixed anything. Maybe that's why they went out of business! I have loved trains since I was a kid. My uncle used to work for the SP and sadly, I know more about trains than he does!

John

[Anonymous]

Not bad Ed if you stick with the eateries near Cicero there are two of themcalled taco patio and mr. taco for about 4$ you can get some good food I work out of Galesburg Il. just hired out in January this year still learning the places to eat in Chicago being that I am a bottom feeder I work mainly in the yard now. Rodney Beck Switchman/foreman BNSF Galesburg Terminal Chicago Division