Expressway is a partnership between trucking companies and the railway…many/most of Expressway’s customers are trucking companies. among them are the large fleets that belong to Canadian Tire and Hudson Bay company and of course the large for hire fleets like Robert. In a nutshell, Expressway allows these fleets to leverage the efficiency of their driver workforce. For example…a driver may take a couple of trailers to the railhead in Toronto for furtherance to Montreal via Expressway. That driver will then take a third trailer over the road to Montreal himself…deliver it…and then head over to the rail in Montreal to get the other two trailers for delivery in Montreal…So in essence the the carrier moves three trailers door to door with just one driver. Traditional TOFC has been marketed much differently than Expressway…as the railroads’ door to door answer to over the road trucking and in direct competition with trucking ( and not in partnership as with Expressway).
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Furthermore, I stay away from the Toronto-Montreal-Detroit corridor due to the rates being so dirt cheap.
The strengths of Expressway: It is a useful tool for high volume truckload carriers and shippers. If you ship 300 + trailers a week in that corridor then you can realize some potential savings by oursourcing the linehaul to CP as opposed to maintaining a a fleet of over -the-road tractors.
Weaknesses: The lane itself is a dog…No trucker can survive for long running back and forth between Toronto and Montreal although many have tried…and Windsor/Detroit isn’t much better if at all. I can’t see how CP can make money with Expressway with prices so low. And I’m sure that the big shippers like Canadian Tire aren’t paying a premium for Expressway…if anything…they are getting volume discounts. But who knows…I’m not on the “inside”…and qui
As for the dynamics of TOFC vs Stack containers…I remember when the early stacks started moving across the CR’s Southern Tier the Road Foreman of Engines extolled the virtues of “passenger train like handling”: smooth handling, responsive, fast, and fast starting and stopping.
As for the marketing. Again we are steeped in tradition and history. I remeber that 500 miles was the standard of moving from road to rail for economy. But there are so many factors today that that might not be true. I am sure that if a railroad could gather enough containers or TOFC or RoadRailers in one place at one time going one place less than 500 even as little as 200 miles perhaps, there could be a way of successfully marketing and operating that service. With needs to clear the highways of congestion and the air of pollutants and to address the physical stresses and costs of building highways with equal volume and weight, it might just be a real solution.
I have often wodered myself whether or not we should have adopted a 6 foot or larger guage in this country…or if it is too late to? Imagine the loading capacity and economy that could have been (be) achieved?
The cost of re-gauging the entire rail network would be astronomical and who would pay for it? I find the occasional suggestions that the track and loading gauges in North America are “too small” strange. Do you consider clearences/tolerances sufficient for 286,000 lbs. railcars to be too restrictive? What is needed is increased capacity, not double sized rolling stock…
For the 334 miles between Montreal - Toronto, that works out to $1.20 to $1.80 per mile. For a 22.5-ton payload, that’s about 5.32 to 8.00 cents per ton-mile. If CPs ‘Expressway’ / [‘Iron Highway’] service is getting anything near that for revenue, then I’m inclined to think that the Expressway could be making a good buck here.
On the other hand, if Expressway is doing that well - then why hasn’t it expanded to other lanes/ Origin-Destination pairs ? [which would be to get more of a ‘good’ thing, of course]
Maybe so…one thing Expressway does have going for it as well is that dray cost to and from the rail is the trucker’s cost. Their service is terminal to terminal. So indeed…if they are getting 400.00 to 600.00 just for the linehaul then maybe they are making out well… although I would wonder why a trucker would pay that much in addition to having to deal with the dray cost at both ends.
I believe CP is on to something with their idea of partnering with truckers instead of using TOFC in the traditional way of competiing with truckers. I just don’t think they picked a very good lane. There are some lanes that would work really well and would be quite lucrative. For example… Charlotte, NC to points in the Northeast… Money is good in that lane…truckers don’t like the lane due to imbalance and would probably embrace a rail carrier that would move their trailers for them. To increase revenues further…offer several ramp off load points in the Northest…schedule the service and let the truckers worry about bringing their trailers in for shipping. Both CSX and NS have publicly stated that they want to take trucks off the road…and here’s a way they could do that…as partners with the trucking carriers.
Ya , but what about regaging (loading gage only, not track gage) just a lane of traffic. Just because you widen the gage , wether it’s a completely new railway or upgrade you can still run conventional trains.
The Channel route in England runs enormous loading gage just for the tunnel. This is considered a very special lane, but the idea might be good. AAR and unions and manangement, employees and even bank thinking might be a drag. Sure old thinking does work for coal and some traditional traffic but …
Ulrich, the point emphasized above was also in one of your previous posts, but it probably bears repeating. So, the railroad intermodal operation is essentially a sub-contractor to the OTR trucker, who is responsible for finding, snagging, and executing the business, scheduling, staff and equipment for the deliveries, etc. As such, by not being the ‘entrepreneur’ in the operation, the railroad should and has to live a lesser rate and profit margin. Fortunately, that appears to be quite possible, as I’ll show in a moment.
I also like and agree with your suggestion regarding other lanes, and that one in particular. Kind of sounds like my I-78 [and I-80, too, I suppose] to New York City suggestion a few posts above.
Here are some numbers I worked out for the CP Expressway operation. I’ll make this briefer than I usually do, but also invite comments, additions, and corrections as I usually do.
I seem to remember another equipment advantage claimed for Expressway is that it could handle any trailer. According to publicity puffs in its early days not all trailers had the necessary strength to be handled by the overhead cranes or other lifting equipment that had become virtually universal at intermodal terminals. Since the source was advertising/pr, this may not be completely true; perhaps one of the folks on this forum with trucking experience can comment.
Good point ! Expressway does claim that it can handle essentially any OTR trailer, of almost any length, or any body configuration - such as tanks, dry bulk, flats, low-boys or drop-beds, etc., and which may not have that internal strength to be lifted overhead.
Whether that trailer strength is still an issue or not is, as you say, something on which someone in the trucking industry has way more expertise than I do.
That is a good point. Paul about your earlier point…i…e the rails would handle the linehaul while the truckers would be the entrepreneurs who bring in the business. I would add that the railroads also have an opportunity to bring in the freight in the same entrepreneurial fashion. Most trucking carriers depend heavily on 3PLs to fill their trucks…the truckers themselves don’t do much in the way of direct sales. Most often the trucker simply goes to an internet loadboard where 3PLs post their available loads and then the trucker chooses the loads he wants from what’s available. Thus, the 3PL is really the entrepreneur…and guess who has been getting into 3PL logistics in a big way?.. the railroads. It’s a really smart move on their part because in this way they really leverage the value of their brand with minimal investment and outlay of capital. So what may happen in our above Charlotte, NC to northeast TOFC scenario is this: Shipper in NC calls CSX’s logistics department to schedule a shipment. CSX Logistics then contacts one of their small fleet truckers they use under contract to pickup the load and deliver it to the railhead… CSX then moves the load north where another (or maybe the same trucking carrier) picks up the trailer for delivery to the receiver. In this scenario CSX would call the shots…they would “own” the relationship with the customer…not the trucker.
I have read a number of sources including David J. DeBoer’s book- Piggyback and Containers: A History of Rail Intermodal on America’s Steel Highway (and he was an insider who helped shape the industry’s modern practices) that many if not most “off the Shelf” OTR trailers cannot be lifted (at least while loaded) by overhead cranes and straddle carriers…
The CP Expressway system started out as a joint R&D program with CSX along with New York Air Brake and MK Rail to build a John Kneiling style “Integral train system”, it was originally conceived to be self -propelled with distributed traction motors. Here’s one of the original patents from General Signal Corp with illustrations:
This was called “Iron Highway” and the first two prototypes were build, but without the cabs and CAT gensets (modular units which would have suppled traction current) installed. They tested on CSX with modified GP40-2s pulling them.
There used to be freight forwarders and warehouses who would find you the bet routing for your product. I know that was mainly for less than car load lots (LCL). But weren’t there, or aren’t there today, services which you can hire to do that, sort of a private, off premise, 1099 contractor, that could be your “shipping department”.
From back on Page 1 of this thread, because I had a further thought on this earlier today:
I was - admittedly incorrectly - recalling this as proposing to hook the RoadRailers/ RailMates to the back of a conventional freight train.
The ‘downside’ that I was wondering about is that - If such a regular freight train is ‘held for tonnage’, or runs at any of the randomly unpredictable hours that trains sometimes do for a variety of reasons - some good, some bad - then that would cause havoc with the schedule keeping, promised transit times for customers, equipment utilization, etc.
But using an intermodal train instead as the ‘parent’ or ‘tractor’ for this move provides a fighting chance on having a dependable schedule and sticking to it, to keep the customers happy.
Or, using one of CN’s ‘Scheduled Railroad’ general freight trains might work just as well. For that reason, maybe CN’s and E. Hunter Harrison’s emphasis on that would have a big benefit here, perhaps one that is not shared with or equally available from other railroads ?
carnej - thanks for those links and summary history. I knew most of that, but not all of it, or in that much detail. I want to go back and review it all more closely when I have a little more time than right now.
Not sure I stated the railroads made a mistake by trying to compete with truckers…although partnering with them (as with Expressway) might be the better way to go.
I’ve found (from my own experience in business) that the line between partner and competitor isn’t usually clear. I partner with my competitors on some projects just as the rails partner with one another in some areas while remaining very competitive in others. Look at CN and CP…they are certainly competitors…yet they partner with one another on track sharing where doing so reduces the cost for both. At one time CN and CP even shared joint ownership in a major international tunnel and in a railroad (Northern Alberta Railway)…Back in the 80s CN and CP also collaborated on a telecommunications venture…aptly named CNCP.
In my scenario above the railroads and truckers collaborate on some business while remaining distinctly competitive in other areas. I sell loads to competitors on a daily basis…and when I have a surplus of equipment in a given area I will accept loads for transport on my own equipment from a competitor who may be short on equipment himself. So there again we’re competitors but also partners.
For CN’s InterModal people to now decide that this business is worth getting would be tantamount to them admitting that they either made a mistake, or have been ‘asleep at the switch’, in not going and getting it themselves already. Whoops ! What - admit an error in judgement ? From a corporate and bureaucratic standpoint, that can be ‘shooting yourself in the foot’ at best, and career-ending at worst. In any but the most enlightened corporate cultures, where’s
Certainly this is sensible enough - actually, really smart - from an economic and efficiency perspective, to avoid waste and under-utilized assets, etc.
But if there’s a customer, regulator, or reporter looking to make trouble, be advised that there’s at least a potential anti-trust vulnerability here: making deals with ostensible competitors over splitting a customer’s business, and possibly the rates as well. Example: “You want to explain why the rate for that shipment which you let your competitor handle was $500, whereas your rate is usually $400”, or “Why was your rate $500, but his rate is usually $400 ?”
I don’t want to go down a sidetrack and get divert
My former colleagues in the various track and engineering departments will hate and fight to the death any of the double-track ‘wide gage train’ proposals for the following reasons, among others that I have previously mentioned:
Super-elevation in curves will be a nightmare. The rise in the outer track would have to be so high that it would be a pretty good hump in that track’s profile.
Inter-track obstacles. Signals could be moved, but not between-track station platforms, nor - most troublesome - such things as girder-type through bridges where the main members are a couple feet above the top of rail between each track. Further, with some of those older ones, the track center spacing can be really odd - and dimensions are way less than we’d like.
25-foot track center spacings are now common out in the wide open space
The Loading gauge of High-Speed 1, the Channel Tunnel link in Englund is call GB+. It is a slight enlargement of the UIC “B” gauge in portions of the envelope. France is a mixture of UIC “B” and UIC “B+”, so the Channel Tunnel link isn’t built with greater clearances than much of France. Germany is mostly built to the still larger UIC “C” gauge.
Despite my jibe at looking outside the box for guage, etc. I often have asked if we have really explored and exploited what we have for both loading and speed? That’s an excellent point, Paul.