"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton For the record I was writing my post and didn't see RRKen until I refreshed my screen. Nice to see a post from someone who obviously works in the business and can present the facts.[tup][tup]
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while.
QUOTE: Originallyt posted by RRKen The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none.
QUOTE: Originally posted by RRKen QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Thirty-five miles north of me,at Wentworth, S.D. is an ethanol plant built about 5 years ago. It is near the end of a little used brach line to the grain elevators at Madison, S.D. It was built there, knowing full well, that there would never be any unit train loads in or out. And yet, they still chose that location. What do you suppose they know that we (and Dave) don't. Oh.....it's also in the center of about 10,000 square miles of cornfields, and 10 miles from Interstate 29,and 30 miles from Interstate 90.[;)] Did you even read the article? The gist of the article is that future growth in ethanol production facilities must conform to unit train dynamics, both for inbound corn and outbound products. Thus, the "all unit train or nothing" spector. The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none. It is some customers and marketers who want the units. Right now, there are only three terminals in the U.S. that can handle them; Watson, CA; Sewaren, NJ, and Albany, NY. (yes I know the aricle says four, if you count Pipola, AZ, which ADM has to itself last I looked) Otherwise, you are just parceling up trains at one end then parcelling them out at the destination. There are a few locations that can take unit trains of DDGs. Pixley, Ca comes to mind as one of them. Otherwise all those cars are singles as well. Although more large terminals will be in the future, you cannot have them in some small location in Michigan or Ohio where they may use only five tank cars a month. So there will always be singles running. I am thinking of places like Richmond, VA, or Spartensburg, SC in particular. I will also dispute the gentleman from Iowa Interstate about inbound corn shipments by rail. Since the first plant here opened in 1998 until now, I have yet to see one inbound train of corn to their facilities. In fact, this area used to send ADM in Clinton, IA trains about once or twice a week. ADM had five or six commited trainsets of cars and power to fulfill the commitiment. This year, only one elevator has shipped to ADM from this area. And the reason is the competition from local ethanol plants. Why get a lower price for your grain at ADM because of transport, when you can get a better price in your county? And that is exactly what the producers here feel. ADM and Cargill in Eddyville for that matter, must seek out other markets, and in the past three or four years have. The only folks this does not really effect is the cattlemen, who now use DDGs as a feed instead of whole grain. An example is the feed lot in Maracopia, AZ. They get multiple unit trains of corn for feed. But now they are building their own ethanol plant. While they will see better prices on local DDGs, they will not see much savings on whole grain as they still must trainsport it from places like Iowa or Nebraska, who has a surplus. Same goes with the California feedlots. I think the term becomes non-competitive. Lastly single car cycle times. I will not dispute that a unit train gives excellant car cycle. All the trains we have sent to Albany have turned in ten days from shipper siding to shipper siding. But Albany can unload 100 cars in 24 hours. Not all end terminals can do that kind of capacity. Surely the ethanol plants cannot load that fast, so they must accumulate cars about a week or more before they can ship a unit. One way around it the marketers have been using is to line up two plants to fill out a unit. Works out rather well since the second plant is right on the way to the destination. In the last few years, I have watched as single cars get about 12 to 15 day cycles to the West Coast and back. Now that the West Coast is not a market we serve, the times get shorter. However, it has always depended on the terminal to unload them. And they tend to be the biggest part of delays of cars. Marketers ship cars based on unloading schedules. But they do not control the end terminal, just sell to them. If Ozul, CA for example gets backed up, those cars they cannot handle have to sit somewhere. And that somewhere is a railroad yard or siding. Meantime, there is more on the way already. Don't get me wrong, the ethanol industry is changing and will continue to. Average plant size in 2002 was 40 mmg/y, now the norm is 100 mmg/y. Production process has also changed. Marketers will meld both rail with barge and truck to deliver the product to the racks. But you will not eliminate the single car shipments, and ethanol plants will not be competitive if they need to ship in whole grains by rail, no matter the economy of scale.
QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Thirty-five miles north of me,at Wentworth, S.D. is an ethanol plant built about 5 years ago. It is near the end of a little used brach line to the grain elevators at Madison, S.D. It was built there, knowing full well, that there would never be any unit train loads in or out. And yet, they still chose that location. What do you suppose they know that we (and Dave) don't. Oh.....it's also in the center of about 10,000 square miles of cornfields, and 10 miles from Interstate 29,and 30 miles from Interstate 90.[;)] Did you even read the article? The gist of the article is that future growth in ethanol production facilities must conform to unit train dynamics, both for inbound corn and outbound products. Thus, the "all unit train or nothing" spector.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Thirty-five miles north of me,at Wentworth, S.D. is an ethanol plant built about 5 years ago. It is near the end of a little used brach line to the grain elevators at Madison, S.D. It was built there, knowing full well, that there would never be any unit train loads in or out. And yet, they still chose that location. What do you suppose they know that we (and Dave) don't. Oh.....it's also in the center of about 10,000 square miles of cornfields, and 10 miles from Interstate 29,and 30 miles from Interstate 90.[;)]
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while. QUOTE: Originallyt posted by RRKen The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none. An interesting difference of opinion.
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QUOTE: Originally posted by beaulieu QUOTE: Originally posted by up829 Small ethanol plants are popping up like wildflowers as venture capitalists see a great investment opportunity, but in terms of volume, ADM is by far the dominant player and also has the resources and political clout to build large scale plants and a distribution network. As well as the other large agribusiness companies like Cargill, Lyle & Tate, etc. There are a lot of smaller Ethanol producers but they are finding it better to market their product through ADM or Cargill as the lack marketing leverage with the major Oil Companies like ExxonMobil. QUOTE: Ethanol may run into some of the same problems as MBTE. Wisconsin has already or is the process of outlawing E10 outside of the Milwaukee air quality region due to concerns about what it will do to the states many fresh water lakes. It was also causing major problems in boats with molded-in fiberglass gas tanks and that may become an issue in other states with large numbers of registered boats. Still selling E10 here in the NW part of Wisconsin as of a few hours ago, John Beaulieu
QUOTE: Originally posted by up829 Small ethanol plants are popping up like wildflowers as venture capitalists see a great investment opportunity, but in terms of volume, ADM is by far the dominant player and also has the resources and political clout to build large scale plants and a distribution network.
QUOTE: Ethanol may run into some of the same problems as MBTE. Wisconsin has already or is the process of outlawing E10 outside of the Milwaukee air quality region due to concerns about what it will do to the states many fresh water lakes. It was also causing major problems in boats with molded-in fiberglass gas tanks and that may become an issue in other states with large numbers of registered boats.
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard We do switch out a lot of single..as in 1 car...QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while. QUOTE: Originallyt posted by RRKen The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard We do switch out a lot of single..as in 1 car...QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while. QUOTE: Originallyt posted by RRKen The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none. An interesting turnaround ....
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard We do switch out a lot of single..as in 1 car...QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while. QUOTE: Originallyt posted by RRKen The reality is right now, it is not that way. When I look at a list of cars billed out, I see lots and lots of singles. Out of 215 last night, none were units, none. An interesting turnaround .... Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ed doesn't work for a class 1/
QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 rrken Thanks for your input on this subject. You not only work for UP but you study the industry you work for and your customers. I work for an industry which supplies products for railcars, particularly tank cars. Those folks are really excited right now. Tank car manufacturers are looking at big production over the next several years, partially thanks to ethanol. A customer of mine is lADM. A recent conversation with my contact indicated that: A. They are building 1billion gallons of manufacturing capacity. B. They will be purchasing 2500 tank cars in the next 3 years. rrken...do you know where the new ADM plants are going to be located? ed
QUOTE: Originally posted by RRKen Those plants will have the advantage of co-gen energy , which will give them a slight advantage to single plant locations.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding QUOTE: Originally posted by RRKen Those plants will have the advantage of co-gen energy , which will give them a slight advantage to single plant locations. What does co-gen energy mean?
QUOTE: Originally posted by beaulieu QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding QUOTE: Originally posted by RRKen Those plants will have the advantage of co-gen energy , which will give them a slight advantage to single plant locations. What does co-gen energy mean? In this case ADM generates steam from the heat and has turbines to generate electricity with the steam.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding Originally posted by RRKen Those plants will have the advantage of co-gen energy , which will give them a slight advantage to single plant locations.
QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton RRKen On my long post, I suggested that a 100 million GPY plant in the middle of the corn belt could find enough corn growing in a 10 to 15 mile radius of the plant to meet annual needs. Even if a plant could buy the closest corn, there is still the matter of storing the crop until consumed. That suggest the possibility of a small shuttle rail movement from storage to plant. Just generally from your observation, where is the corn coming from and how is it shipped in?
QUOTE: Originally posted by rrandb The largest difficulty in receiving the tank trains may well be rail access to the tank farms(i.e. fuel storage facilities). If unit trains can get there they should be able to unload their capacity as they are used to recieving 100's of thousands of gallons of product at a time thru their pipelines. They just are not used to it arriving by rail. I wonder how long it takes to unload a unit train of tank cars into tank trucks?[?] As always ENJOY
QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM If you want to know what BNSF is really doing, go to thier webiste and select Markets, Agricultural, Ethanol. It opens a page that touts a 95 car "Ethanol Express". At the top of the page is a link to Single Car Rates, which in fact gives both single car and unit train rates. You can print them out and study them minutely if you wish. Evidently there is no demand for block rates as I previously speculated. Funny how the facts quell speculation.
QUOTE: Originally posted by rrandb One of the problems with ethonal is it blends readilly with both gasoline and water. There are traps that catch water etc. in these piplines and help prevent it from contaminating the gasoline. The ethanol sucks it all up and mixes it with the product even when blended at only 10%. It is also considered corrosive. [2c] As always ENJOY
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