You all seem to have forgotten to mention a small company called IBP (Iowa Beef Processors). About 45 years ago IBP discovered a simple fact of economics, that it is cheaper to slaugher meat near the point of production and then ship the final product out in boxes than to ship the entire animal to point of consumption (like Chicago) and slaughter it there. Since railroads have never been able to provide a competitive service for perishable products virtually all boxed meat products now move via truck.
And for all of you rail supporters who insist on whining about the trucking industry instead of trying to understand why rail really failed here’s a sobering thought. The United States of America enjoys the highest standard of living and the most productive economy in the world today. These twin benefits are built on foundation of the most efficient and productive supply chain in the world which rests squarely on a freight transportation system where trucking is the dominant domestic mode (70% share of intercity tonnage). For all its flaws and faults the trucker industry must be doing something right.
Many of the post on this thread and other topics seem to believe that if freight of any kind is moving from one point to another, the railroads should be making every possible effort to try to get this business. Virtually none of the movement of livestock or processed meat is in the kind of quantity that would give the railroads a distinct economic advantage over other modes for hauling this freight.
To say the least, this is very high maintenance business. Consider everything that HighIron2003 has talked about and contrast that to the kind of effort necessary to handle a load of dry freight. Then add the fact that there is not that much money being paid to haul either livestock or processed meat, and then you might get the idea why railroads are not going to try to capture this business. Bottom line, it is just not worth the effort.
Well, moo to you Jay. And I’ll still buy you that beer at the dog track if you’ve got time. But once again, I’m going to disagree with you. As a very good man named Al Watkins once said to me, “You don’t make money by not hauling frieght”.
The beef belongs on the rail. As does the pork and the poultry. I like Colorado lamb best, but I know it doesn’t have the volume that the other meats do.
Here’s the deal. Beef production in the US has concentrated into about 26 plants that produce 70% of the US beef. Each and every American eats about 68 pounds of beef per year. That’s a lot 'O beef. And it’s steady.
These plants are concentrated in a “Beef Mine” that extends between Amarillo and Denver. Their product moves very great distances to the populatiion centers on the East and West coasts. It’s long haul, high volume, and high revenue. Custom made for a rail haul. Double stack economics could easily defeat the truck rates on these high volume lanes. It’s a ripe apple ready for picking.
Assuming you are talking about boxed meat, you might be right, but I would have to see the numbers before I would stick a buck in that venture. Won’t go into the number crunching process because I’m sure you know the drill.
By the way, did you know that the IC pulled out of hauling beef in TOFC service over the Iowa lines back about 1970? Different times, but the study did cover the inherent problems associated with handling that kind of business.
I’ll tell you right now that while I can imagine in my mind’s eye a batch of ARMN Reefers spotted at say… Liberal Kansas and humming waiting to be loaded with beef.
Let’s look at Whorley’s in Pittsburgh PA. I recall delivering beef there once or twice. They sit in a large multistory building deep inside downtwon Pittsburgh. Show me a rail siding anywhere near the building.
Let’s look at any of the walmart distribution centers. Any of these will work if only you can lay rail to them. They work the grocery and dry on one side and cooled and frozen on the other side. Everything else gets stored in the trailers until they need them.
Let’s look at inner city. I recall Baltimore once had stockyards for a Oscar Meyer plant (Old Swift facilities) I guess they can do alot of street running to reach this outfit by rail. But would need to connect this place first.
So. There it is… rail service to these places directly to the customer is nigh impossible due to years of neglect of the “Local” shippers and recievers. Railroads will prefer to run a 100 car double stack of humming refridgerated containers to either coast than to dig thru weeds and sunken rail to get that reefer load of meat to the customer.
My local grocery store depends on Associated Grocers and Sysco as well of any number of vendors. None of which are built for rail.
However, all of them treat meat loads as TOP priority.
I recall a Kroger’s in Ft Worth Tx which is a distribution facility for local stores in that metroplex. They get thier meat out of Denver. You must have it on thier propery at Ft Worth the next morning by 9 am. 10 Am they start refusing those who are late to finish up the day’s shipments to service the local stores.
I dont see a easy way to rail that center.
Now… here is my idea…
Take the meat loads, load em on the train by way of intermodal boxes. Stack the boxes of say… regional bound meat and send them dow
The specifics of livestock-by-rail have been very well covered. As a general comment, railroads over the past fifty years have sought to cut costs by concentrating on bulk commodities, largely ceding time-sensitive traffic and that which requires special handling to trucking. The exceptions are volume movements for very large shippers such as motor vehicle mfrs and UPS. Factors which could potentially shift significant quantities of freight back to the rails are largely external to the industry, and include large and permanent increases in fuel prices, highway capacity constraints and driver shortage; that last one is already having some effect.
Well, moo to you Jay. And I’ll still buy you that beer at the dog track if you’ve got time. But once again, I’m going to disagree with you. As a very good man named Al Watkins once said to me, “You don’t make money by not hauling frieght”.
The beef belongs on the rail. As does the pork and the poultry. I like Colorado lamb best, but I know it doesn’t have the volume that the other meats do.
Here’s the deal. Beef production in the US has concentrated into about 26 plants that produce 70% of the US beef. Each and every American eats about 68 pounds of beef per year. That’s a lot 'O beef. And it’s steady.
These plants are concentrated in a “Beef Mine” that extends between Amarillo and Denver. Their product moves very great distances to the populatiion centers on the East and West coasts. It’s long haul, high volume, and high revenue. Custom made for a rail haul. Double stack economics could easily defeat the truck rates on these high volume lanes.
from what i can tell, CPR is still transporting cattle in rail cars here. Usually around 2 am I can hear them in the rail yard. Though I have not gone down to confirm this, I can’t see anyplace else they would be comming from.
Swift and Armour started this whole thing when they built their first processing plants in Chicago. Livetsock came in by rail, got slaughtered, and sides of beef went east by rail in Swift-owned refers. At first, this practice wasn’t accepted, as butchers and consumers wanted fresh meat, so Swift started up a series of wholesalers in smaller eastern cities. In the larger cities these wholesalers operated out of the central city food markets. This worked until the western population started to expand, then the business went regional(Omaha, IBP, etc.).
The wholsale markets still exist and restaurants and smaller independent butchers still deal with them, but the large grocery chains are able to deal direct with the packing houses and have their own distribution centers. From these centers, a lot more than just meat goes out to the stores by truck. Also, it’s doubtful a small local butcher would be interested in frozen packaged meat, but the chains seem to be selling more and more of it.
[:D]USED TO HAUL COWS, LATE 60’S EARLY 70’S AND I’M TELLEN GREYHOUND RIGHT NOW, THAT I CAN’T EVER REMEMBER HAVING A BUNCH OF COWS ON MY TRUCK, OVER 20HRS., LET ALONE 24… I HAULED THEM FROM CO. WY. KS., TO AMARILLO, AND THE REASON THAT WE HAULED THEM IN TRUCKS,WAS THAT THE RAILROADS DIDN’T WANT TO FOOL WITH THEM. HAULIN “BULLS” WAS A TOUGH JOB, BUT YOU ALWAYS HAD A “BIG HORSE” THAT WOULD GET YOU DOWN THE ROAD. I DO BELIEVE, HOWEVER, THAT WE ALSO HAD THE SAME RULES ABOUT WATERING AND LETTING THEMOUT. [:D] CHIP
Thanks for a very enjoyable and informative thread. On a sidetrack… Speaking of the Ft. Worth Stockyards (as some were doing above), one additional item which makes them a pretty nifty tourist destination is the Ft. Worth “Tarantula” Train, a tourist & historical train line operating behind either a vintage diesel or a 100+ year old steam engine, part of the FWW RR. The train begins at Grapevine, runs through and stops at the Stockyards, and continues on across the Trinity River - visit www.tarantulatrain.com for more. A very fun trip.
To comment on the side track above, I agree the FWRR in Grapevine is a awesome place for the tourist railroad type. There are also plenty of railfaning places here in the metro.
Yes, Jay, I was there when we terminated the reefer trailers. As, you say “Different Times.”
We coudn’t legally sign a contract with a shipper. IBP wanted to use us to move beef from Sioux Falls to Chicago using their private fleet trailer equipment. But their trucking company “Processed Beef Express” was a “Contract Carrier”. We were a “Common Carrier” and the stupid laws didn’t allow a contract carrier to use the services of a common carrier. So the government literally ordered the beef back on the highway.
We had to supply equipment on a “first ordered” basis. One day I got a call from a shipper in Indianapolis demanding that we supply him a reefer trailer. He was quoting the Federal reg to me. This nut wanted us to pull a trailer from our regular customer, move it empty (no revenue) to Indy, let him load it to Memphis, then deadhead it back to Chicago. We would have had twice the empty miles as loaded miles for this one *** load.
And we were handling only swinging meat, not boxed. It’s pretty much all boxed now.
We did set up a sweet move with the Martrac division of UPS. We took their packages west to Sioux City as dry loads in their reefers, then brought the beef back east. It worked fine until the operating department screwed up the Iowa Division. We lost the loads to the Milwaukee Road Sprint Trains over the Twin Cities ramp. Guy Shively of UPS called me to
ICG apparently could not leave well enough alone then? With that Milwalkee loads set up I would just let it run as long there is enough equiptment and drivers to keep that gravy train going.
What I dont understand is what did the ICG do to warrant UPS to yank freight? Did they mess with the schedule? Steal the trailers? Short the drivers? Or what? What did it take for UPS to step in and say “That’s enough?”
Basically it was a failure to recover from weather delays in a timely fashion. We were having a bad winter with lots of snow to clear. Trucking companies like UPS generally understand weather problems since they’re operating in the same environment.
What they didn’t accept was the situation where our operating people just seemed to give up on running trains in Iowa. It seemed they weren’t even trying to move the loads. UPS finnally decided that if we weren’t even going to try they would go with someone who would.
The westbound packages were actually going to Sioux Falls. The eastbound meat was originating in Laverne (SP?), Minnesota. We handled the trailers over a Sioux Falls ramp until we abandoned the line into Sioux Falls. UPS then trucked from and to Sioux City. When the service totally collapsed they found it better to use the Milwaukee Road to the Twin Cities and truck out of there instad of Sioux City.
This is one of those commodities whose potential movement by rail could be enhanced by the use of bi-modal equipment, assuming you can concentrate enough boxed carcasses to make up a 125 unit RoadRailer or RailRunner consist, maybe once or twice a week. The quicker modal transfer from truck to rail and rail to truck of bi-modal technology compared to the transfer times of TOFC and COFC could lend its way to staying within the more restrictive time constraints of beef transportation.
That, and building a new freight based High Speed Rail network ought to do the trick!
IMHO, the problem isn’t the it’s can’t be done but that it can and the railroads don’t want to deal with that kind of problem. Bad enough that haz mat materials derail but can you imagine the publicity of have carcasses spread far and wide from a cattle derailment? Not to mention the already posted issued of regulations and storage. Sure moving cattle by rail can be done but do you really expect the class 1’s to jump on this band wagon while there is still money to made in them that there intermodle stuff…