whats the diffrence between these 3 Intermodal trains?
P - Premium Service Intermodal Trains
Q - Guaranteed Service Intermodal Trains
S - Container Stack Intermodal Trains
A Q Service train on teh BNSF means Get the HELL OUT OF THE WAY for it if your a Lower Priorty train. Customers that us it are UPS the US Mail and Fed EX Also will see some JB Hunt and Schiender on here also. P Level trains are made up of Customers like Cr England ABF Yellow and about anyone Else that still ships TOFC and alot of Domestic Containers. S levels are made up of Normal Double Stack Traffic and Domestic Stack Traffic that as long as it gets there it on a Certain Window it is on time.
Thing of a Q train as Over night Package Mail. P as First Class Mail and the S Class as Parcel Post. You pay for what you get in Service.
Good question - not easy to find a precise or accurate answer. In the meantime:
See page 2 of 4 of this BNSF brochure regarding the differences between “Domestic Container” - “International Container” and “Trailer Service” (about 3.1 MB electronic file size): http://www.bnsf.com/customers/pdf/Intermodal_Brochure.pdf
See also the 1st entry regarding “Expedited” vs. "Standard"on this BNSF “Intermodal FAQ” page: http://www.bnsf.com/bnsf.was7/pmcweb/PMCCentralController?pageName=PMCHeaderLink&pageAction=Faq&businessUnit=A&REQ_TOKEN=2Y7ML0V4ZKL6ITDYOSP0TLNMXUUGHN
A sample inquiry to the “BNSF Intermodal Advisor” at: http://www.bnsf.com/bnsf.was7/pmcweb/PMCCentralController for a dry load from Los Angeles to Chicago yielded a faster trip at a slightly higher cost for “Expedited Service” as compared to “Premium Service”. So yes, macthing up BNSF’s terminology with the train symbol types does seem to be a little confusing.
- Paul North.
Not all BNSF Z service trains have priority. The class service, are divided by a 1,2,7,8,9 symbol. The UPS traffic are hauled on 8,9’s and maybe some 7’s. Any Z 8 or 9 are the golden cows.These are the calls first out crews want as once the train departs the terminal, they are not swapped. Other lower priority Z’s will run w/ a 1 or 2 symbol and have the same priority as a 55 mph M symbol. On the Gallup Sub between Belen-Winslow it is not totally out of the norm for a lower symbol Z to run 55 mph and follow traffic for most of its trip. Again its what the shipper pays for and who they are. Just because one at trkside may see a Z go by again doesn;t mean its a get-out-my-way train.
On the northern transcon, they don’t get any hotter than a “Z-9” symbol like ZCHCSSE9 or ZCHCPTL9. Q trains (QSTPTAC, QDENTAC, etc.) are normally secondary to Z’s here. S trains are stuffed with as many import/export containers as the power can drag along, and often require a shove over Marias Pass, nowhere near the time sensitivity of a Z.
In recent yrs BNSF and its unions have put in place run through pool crew boards for some intermodal traffic. Even though high roster SF guys hold these turns, every now & then a BNSF hire from the 1990’s is awarded a bid–normally the junior person on the board. The long pools are Kan City-Oklahoma City (run through Ark City), Amarillo-Belen (run through Clovis) and Needles-San Bernardino (run through Barstow).
Back in the early 1990’s, there was an outstanding article on the ATSF intermodal system and how pricing was based on service. It might have been written by Mr. Fred Frailey. Had to have been before the merger into BN,as it was all about the ATSF system.
Ed
“Mission impossible: making rail intermodal profitable - how the Santa Fe turned things around in the early 1990s”, from Trains, July 1998, p. 64 [author not listed*]
(“Magazine Index” keywords: atsf economics intermodal )
*By Jim Giblin, former ATSF manager, then with a 3rd-party logistics provider in Chicago.
Fred Frailey wrote a more operations-oriented article, “Twenty-Four Hours at Supai Summit”, November 1996 Trains, pgs. 38 - 51, which Giblin referenced in the opening paragraph of his.
- Paul North.
P.S. - Blankety-blank software here now won’t accept “hard returns”, which is why the above is all run together. [sigh]