BNSF to dispose of their intermodal boxes??

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

I’ve heard that BNSF is going to divest themselves of their rail vans and NACS containers and sell or lease them to trucking companies and IMC’s to manage. They’ll still provide power and platforms, but their getting out of intermodal asset management.

Has anybody else heard this? Any comments?

2

If they lease them will they still need people to bill out the per diem charges/damages & other misc things that go along with leasing?[:o)]

3

HUB is already doing that for their trailers and has been for a few years.

Owning RR trailers and containers has always been tricky business and the margins have been thin. It’s hard enough for the intermodal operating departments to run the terminals and gates, much less worry about equipment supply and demand. I can see why BNSF might do this.

On the other hand, the RR owned and operated EMP container pool has been pretty sucessful. It operates on a reservation system contracted out to a 3rd party. There is a penalty if you reserve a box and don’t use it.

4

It makes sense when you figure the BNSF and other railroads don’t have a sales force to market the boxes. If they let someone else market the containers they can reduce the sales forces even further. The sales people remaining can then focus on a few large shippers that own the containers instead of trying to find small businees who want to move one or two boxes now and then.

Reducing employment levels in the railroad industry is the main goal, almost the only goal.

5

The problem is it can be really hard to predict where you’d need the trailers.

I can remember the process at Conrail went something like this:

  1. Ask each of theIMCs you do business with how many they need at a location.
  2. Add them up.
  3. Send that many empties to that locaton

Sounds good until you realize a couple of things.

  1. There is no penalty to the IMC if they “lie high”, only if they guess low - then they don’t have a trailer for a load
  2. Each of the IMCs is jockeying for some of the same loads.

For example, if there are 30 potential loads to go after and 6 IMCs serving that market, they might each tell you “I need 20 trailers”. So, you send 120 trailer out to service 30 loads.

What happens next is you try to compare what each IMC acutally pulled against what they requested and adjust. This is not as simple as it sounds, since the data you need likely isn’t in the same form or format.

It’s such a hassle and so costly to guess wrong, I can see why the RRs are looking for a better way.