Back about 10 or 15 years ago there was a great shift in transportation in Canada…a shift from road to rail for long moves from central Canada to the Atlantic provinces and the West. I was one of the few who bucked the trend…I kept my over the road trucks, but run them increasingly on short hauls into the states…until this week. The weather has played havoc with the rails…customers are calling me for TRUCK availability… moved a couple of loads to Vancouver (from Toronto) for $8500.00 a piece today. February is usually slow…but not this year. I guess I’ll enjoy it until the warm weather comes around…and then the rails will offer their great rates once again on all those empty cans they’ve got to get back to the west coast and onward to China.
I wish that was true here in the States. Rates are down and loads are heavy.
I’m glad to see the railroads prospering. Railroads are MUCH more efficient in moving cargo than trucks on long hauls. The savings in fuel is tremendous. Trucks should be used for hauls to and from customers from the intermodal yards. Trucks would NOT loose out at all. Here in south central Pennsylvania we have 2 i/M yards. The NS yard (Ex Reading Rutherford yard) in Harrisburg and the new CSX yard in Chambersburg. They are moving a lot of truck freight into and out of their yards.
I agree, and for the most part that’s happening. Back when I started in freight about 20 years it was commonplace to send a truck from Toronto to Calgary or Vancouver. Today that would be exceptional…almost everything between the major centers goes by rail. You do still see alot of trucks given that there are so many off line points that aren’t serviced by rail…For example, it would probably take weeks to ship something from Gaspe, Quebec to Flin flon, MB by rail…something that a truck could do in three days.
This surprised me. I recently had to give a customer a tracking number for a shipment via UPS from Toronto to Calgary. I was kind of surprised when I was told the train was delayed. What? I thought all UPS went by truck. How can UPS do this efficiently? Do they load a container?
Thanks,
Tom
Who said UPS is efficient? If you ship from Boston to Cape cod the package goes to Shrewsbury first then to the Cape. That turns a thirty mile trip to a ninety mile trip. I tracked a package from Syracuse N.Y. to Atlanta to Hyannis. That was a next day package! Remember thier motto- When it positivly doesnt have to be there any time soon.
But rail service in Canada is very efficient, thanks in large part to the fact that most people here live in the eight or nine major cities which happen to be aligned fairly nicely across the continent.
In the US things are alot more complex…your population is more spread out among the smaller towns…and most people don’t live in the eight or nine biggest cities. Fred Frailey in an article in Trains a few years back made a good case for NS as the most efficient road given it’s ability to handle freight over a complex network heavily slanted to short hop moves. Unlike CN (which is widely regarded as a top notch contender)…which has a fairly simple network to manage.
UPS and others use rail, but many who do so don’t advertise it. Many shippers aren’t knowledgeable about rail, and when they hear RAIL they think POOL CAR…and when you’re a UPS or some other expedite carrier the last thing you’d want to do is give your customer the impression his package may be on a siding somewhere in a boxcar.
As a trucker I’d like to see more freight on the rails. But in the USA it is not going to happen. From what I see a customer had a load to move. Trouble is the product is not made yet because they have cut back on workforce. The guy at the other end really needs that load to fill his orders for the next day. Oh yea the line haul is 800 mi. Finally they finish and the load is ready. Now they want you to run that 800 mi as quick as you can. Please do not stop to eat or sleep. This is the part that gets me. They are only paying what I call WalMart rates. They want all this for the lowest price they can get by with. Someone will haul the load.
Put the freight on the rails and get it off the highway. Have it ready when the train leaves or pay top dollar to put it on the pavement.
Tell me about it . I went dead trying to get up enough air to do an air test last week [8D]
Things do take longer in the winter. But so many managers insist upon moving everything at once when two or three trains would not only get over the road, but without delay.
Next you have junk cars, especially from some short lines like PGR who never maintain them. They leak like a sieve. Bad enough you have so many new guys who have to walk air in sub-zero nights trying to find the problem. Then you have managers calling on the radio asking when the train will be ready about every fifteen minutes or so.
It really does not have to be that way. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business in cold climates.
I hear ya man . We sat for 2 hours watching 2 guys with a belt back playing kick the box car and the trainmaster had the nerve to call us on the radio and ask us what we were doing [(-D]
So then with 1 hour and 10 mintues to go they want us to make a double and shove back 8400 feet and do an air test and take the train thru customs over the the US side . HA ! The cars we tied onto must have been off air for some time because it took me nearly 35 minutes to get up to 75 pounds on the tail end .
One word . Clueless …
Only half an hour? That’s not bad…
Now, when CN tries to run a 10K foot train over Yellowhead and it sits in Jasper trying to get the air up until the crew goes dead, now THAT is winter!
I bet man [:D]
UPS is one of, if not the largest, shippers in rail intermodal service. Most long distance Ground shipments will have a rail leg in their route. UPS tracking system will not identify where the rail legs are as your shipment is still in the UPS trailer. Railroads jump through many hoops to attract and keep the UPS business.
UPS measures the railroads performance by what they term ‘Sort Failures’. Each load that UPS puts on the railroads (and I would also imagine their own over the road operation) has a specific ‘Sort’ to make at destination. Generally an intermodal train can be an hour or two late and the UPS loads can be grounded and moved to the UPS facility in time to make the ‘Sort’. If there are 10 UPS trailers on a train and they miss the ‘Sort’, that becomes 10 Sort Failures. In instances where there is a line blockage (derailment etc.) in some cases the railroads will, at their own expense, ground the UPS trailers and hire truckers to dray the trailers to destination in order to prevent a Sort Failure.
While you may dis UPS service, my experiences with FedEx and DHL have been much worse than UPS.
yeahhhh,hmmmm,oh,by the way…it gets cold in FDL…yep,we got those tms that as soon as they walk off the stage after gaduatting college…they iz uh railroader…AND…you better git that 9000 footer going in 15 minutes…never mind the ambient temp of -11 degrees…ALSO…after a couple of doubles…in yard…just git out of the yard so “THEY” get a little extra something in the pay envelope…oh yeah,dont git me started on thuh TEAMSTERS…(RAILROAD UNION)…??? save that for another day…have a goot day y’all…