There’s no question about it. On the rail double stack is much more efficient. The weight per load is less than TOFC. This results in less fuel used, more revenue loads in a given train length, less wear and tear on track, etc.
In a terminal I see a trade off. They can get more doubled stacked containers on a given track than they can trailers. But things get more complex with containers as they must match up a chassis with a container instead of just setting a trailer on the ground. There are more moves in the terminals to handle containers than trailers. More moves = more costs.
On the highway, again, there’s no question about it. But it’s the other way around. The trailer is much more efficient. A tractor-trailer combination will weigh less than a tractor-container-chassis combination. Any increase in tare weight must be made up for in a loss of payload weight. Not good.
We’re talking intermodal here, so rail costs, terminal costs, and highway costs all come in to play.
I’d opine that there needs to be more consideration of the total door to door costs. Each component will factor in differently depending on the distance moved, the density of the commodity, and the capacity of the rail line. I judge that’s there’s too much emphasis on the rail cost component to the detriment of the total cost component.
When it comes to containers there needs to be terminal segregation and grounded operation. ISO and Domestic need seperate pads inside terminals. Along with sorting by priority to eliminate multiple flips of containers. This is where visibility into cargo movement needs to happen. Not for the equipment, but the actual cargo inside the container. With automation, grounded operation, and much better staging of boxes that will help reduce cost of COFC terminal operation.
While there are trade offs, COFC has more pros than TOFC. Trailers eat up scarce space and this will be key consideration in IM service options. TOFC is also highly cyclical compared to COFC. Indicators such as this are at the forefront vs. total cost component, and will likely remain that way…
My train of thought… Can we build a lighter tare Container/Chassis combo? A 53’ combo comes in at approx. 17,500 lbs. Can we get that down to 14,000 lbs.?, 13,500 lbs.? With a lighter daycab for draying you can match or slightly exceed the trailer lading limit.
We could, and many have tried. In fact even current underframes aren’t really optimized for OTR operation in the sense their operation would be comparable to typical van-trailer handling.
The first difficulty is that much containerization is standardized around the expectation of USO marine container standards. Special lighter containers that are domestic service top-row-only do exist, but I understand it’s a pain to handle them even when minimal dwell and no ground time become essential.
The second difficulty comes when underframes have to be operated or shuttled light. Make them too light and all sorts of problems start, including those from torsional shock. Make them ‘domestic service only’ and whole new levels of logistics processing and PRR scheduling are likely to become necessary to ‘prevent incidents’. And it only takes one incident to wipe out months of the ‘big savings’ from your two-ton tare reduction…
It’s going to be difficult to approximate stressed-member construction in dry-van structure with any composite system of a container built for top lift sitting on a chassis that only contacts it via gravity and four little locks. You’ll need a far lighter tractor, which I think will dramatically limit the number of tractor O/Os you’re likely to contract with – I suspect the things would have to be restricted range aside from their having no sleeper for mandatory rest, and the situation would make battery ‘carbon reduction’ even more laughably non-cost-effective except in a politicized long-term future. Consider simply what is needed to make a dry van that can be lifted vertically and swung using a typical spreader to get a handle on the tare weight and other-con
SD60MAC9500
My train of thought… Can we build a lighter tare Container/Chassis combo?
We could, and many have tried. In fact even current underframes aren’t really optimized for OTR operation in the sense their operation would be comparable to typical van-trailer handling.
The first difficulty is that much containerization is standardized around the expectation of USO marine container standards. Special lighter containers that are domestic service top-row-only do exist, but I understand it’s a pain to handle them even when minimal dwell and no ground time become essential.
The second difficulty comes when underframes have to be operated or shuttled light. Make them too light and all sorts of problems start, including those from torsional shock. Make them ‘domestic service only’ and whole new levels of logistics processing and PRR scheduling are likely to become necessary to ‘prevent incidents’. And it only takes one incident to wipe out months of the ‘big savings’ from your two-ton tare reduction…
With a lighter daycab for draying you can match or slightly exceed the trailer lading limit.
It’s going to be difficult to approximate stressed-member construction in dry-van structure with any composite system of a container built for top lift sitting on a chassis that only contacts it via gravity and four little locks. You’ll need a far lighter tractor, which I think will dramatically
As a little bit of devil’s-advocacy: Somewhat more racking of a domestic container might be tolerable, even to the extent it would warp a light underframe somewhat in transit and arrive with jammed doors. Means of determining and jacking ‘low corners’ to get the doors open (or to get them latched and locked fully on loading) could be relatively easily provided for the use of those needing to strip or stuff such a container, especially if it is ‘grounded’ for temporary storage as I see so many used at holiday times.
With the practical advent of low-cost and electrically-efficient disk and fiber welding, I think it will become at least possible to assure high-integrity full-pen welding when fabricating or repairing lightweight containers. That might both reduce required tare weight and nominal required factor of safety in parts of the design or spec while ensuring a ‘quality’ and safe article.
I continue to believe, though, that the primary key as far as ‘railroad’ involvement remains minimal or wholly-predictable/schedulable dwell, which is a very different priority than container movement in and out of the facility as a whole.
If you want a quick and easy TOFC expedient, build four-wheel-steer autonomous-capable yard tractors and provide aprons the length of a depressed track. Any number of tractors can bind on from either side, move the trailers off, and stage them for parallel inspection and OTR tractor attachment without holding up subsequent (and nearly as easy) loading and securement of trailers to be loaded (prestaged for example on the ‘other side’ from the gang unloading)
(Cars might be kangaroo-pocketed with ramps and some decking to reduce wind resistance a la ATSF if desired; the bind
I wonder how this would work. You would have to keep track of two types of chassis. And make SURE the lightweights don’t go on public streets. In Oakland, and I think most ports, that means these could only be used in one yard. You could not carry a load from the rail terminal to the ship terminal.
Too, don’t forget that not all containers are ship-rail. There are many that leave the terminal yard and are delivered locally. For overseas, in Oakland, I expect it’s the majority of containers.
Also, you’re saving close to nothing by using a “yard chassis” in the yard. There’s NO weight limit, except for that specified by the owning entity. Certainly not the State.
“Lightweighting” the standard chassis would be the way to go. But WHO gets the benefit? Chassis are commonly done as free-floating, I think. So, while the OWNER of the chassis gets the expense, how does the OWNER reap the profits?
IF there is a single owner shipping terminal, THAT owner can go all lightweight. But these days it’s awfully rare to see a container ship loaded only with the owner’s containers. So then the leasing companies get a weight break. Or that terminal gets to keep track of two kinds of chassis.
Still, lightweighting of chassis seems like the best way to go.
Worked in conjunction with the B&O’s TOFC Terminal in Baltimore at Wicomoco - before the age of containerization. Rail cars were loaded and unloaded by the circus method. Yard tractors with hydraulic 5th wheels did all the loading and unloading. It was not that infrequent of a occurrence that a yard tractor didn’t have sufficient hydraulic power to be able to lift some of the overloaded trailers that were being shipped over rail - thus missing Weigh Stations. Subsequently the City of Baltimore invested in mobile weighing equipment and would set up random check points to catch the overloaders.
I was actually thinking the yard chassis would be heavier than ‘OTR’ (by at least the proportion that ship containers can be overloaded if not intended to be intermodally roaded) and might be fitted with some of the otherwise-somewhat-wacky self-loading and -unloading gear to distribute landing and loading areas to reduce shuttling expensive mobile vertical-lift machines like Mi-Jacks.
I’m discussing something a little more precisely angled: a system that would minimize both loading and unloading dwell of various kinds of railroad equipment kept in either blocks or complete trains. This would be true regardless of whether containers of different loads or restrictions were in use.
To the extent this condition requires a fixed schedulable pool of short-turn dedicated underframes, which can be heavy within reasonable limits as they are not expected to run up long miles at OTR speed, I continue to think that a high closed utilization of a reserved pool of ‘rubber-tired’ chassis makes the best sense if it is impractical for any reason to assure ‘timing’ of either arriving or departing OTR underframes with full, not just high, assurance.
JB Hunt chassis and containers can only be used with each other. They’re intentionally designed that way. A JB Hunt container won’t work on a “Standard” chassis and a JB Hunt chassis can’t be used with a “Standard” container.
I know when I worked for Navistar, we offered tractors with aluminum frames. Put that with aluminum single tire wheels and smaller fuel tanks. Do the same with the chassis.
I wonder just how light you could get and what it would cost. It must be thought of as a through system, door to door. Not just an optimization for each segment of the movement.
I’m thinking domestic shipments here. Things that weigh out before they cube out. Stuff such as produce (it’s mostly water) from western states and Mexico to eastern population centers. There’s a whole lot of that freight moving long distances by truck.
You can easily get too light for your own good. Was it the T2000s that started to get damage from potholes and even missed-shift chassis torquing by having their frames “lightened” (perhaps by some of Dieter’s overzealous little bungineers?)
An underframe built too light for predictable abuse in service may easily prove false economy, and while I think there is ample scope for ‘going more lightweight’ in pure-intermodal design it would be risky at best to go about it piecemeal, or with the wrong design priority.
I have been a strong proponent of Alcoa wheels on OTR vehicles for many years. Consider the reasons so few container underframes have them.
I thoroughly agree that a specialized lightweight system could be ‘made to fly’ by a single shipper (or a group designing donestic container intermodal to common PRIIA-like open standards). I see only Flexi-Van-like disaster for one company intentionally embracing proprietary standards – no matter how high-traffic they are in particular lanes, and no matter how advantageous their proprietary features.
If I were running a PSR railroad I’d have a special demurrage schedule for those ‘proprietary’ Hunt containers for any time the correct number of underframes failed to be present right at the time I unloaded Hunt containers from one of my trains.
I would argue, though, that the rail portion of a trip is not something that optimized for lower tare in a walled-garden ‘end to end’ model – an awful lot of experience says that it’s better to go the other way and build equipment with the greatest ad hoc loading flexibility. Viz. the great number of articulated well sets built to ISO 40’ length now c
Oddly, I knew one. That is: a jockey who decided to do long-haul driving. He did very well, I believe. By the time I met him, he was fully retired, but he showed my pictures of his trucks and talked my ear off.
Which was actually a very pleasant loss (I stuck it back on later).
Oh, I don’t know. I doubt that it is a good business plan to try to shove the people in Lowell, Arkansas around. Work as a partner, not as a boss.
Arkansas is just amazing as an entrepreneurial incubator. Besides JB Hunt we’ve got Tyson, Walmart, and the LTL operations of FedEx (Well most of it) that started in Arkansas and grew.
Well, there’s certainly no sense in developing equipment that can’t stand up to the job. But getting around 4,000 pounds out of the tractor-chassis-container combination would be of great benefit for a whole lot of domestic loads.
I don’t know the reasons. I’ll guess it’s that most of the imports in 40 foot containers cube out before they hit the weight limits. So there’s no reason to spend the money to lighten the chassis.
The issue here is not trying to ‘shove JB Hunt around’ – it specifically relates to the expressed concern of the thread that shippers may not be arranging to pick up arriving containers ‘timely’, and choosing to build containers incompatible with standard underframes would make it artificially more difficult to use anything other than top lift to ground or move them.
As the incompatibility was designed in for Hunt’s sole benefit, they should bear a fair share of the potential consequence of that choice.
Of course a proper railroad – PSR or otherwise – would work to ensure the situation doesn’t arise, and a well-run company like Hunt would likely not exploit the situation.
4k pounds try more on the order of around 7 thousand pounds needs to be removed from the average container chassis combination when you compare them to either a standard high cube 53 trailer or reefer. The lightest dry 53 trailer out there is under 12k pounds ready to go down the road. The lightest tare I’ve ever seen on a 53 foot container is in the 11k range. Then throw in the chassis with another 7k range. I see the bill of lading difference on the shipments we send out on containers versus trailers all the freaking time. Containers around here are always 3 tons less or 6 boxes less than a dry van. For a reefer trailer it’s worse. The newest generation of utility trailers weight in at the same as the freaking container does without the chassis at all and that includes the reefer unit installed with a 50 gallon tank. So unless you’re hauling cube out goods you’re screwed if you want to rub containers as your primary source of box.
My bosses latest order of dry van’s has gotten us back to a possible max load of 47000 pounds we have cut off over 1k pounds of weight in the trailers alone with newer materials introduced in the last couple years.
As of today JBH has a fleet over 100K+ 53’s. For such a large asset provider you will have your own chassis fleet as it’s more efficient. This gives you priority to flip boxes, eliminates using a chassis pool paying associated fees, and rental. So that would be a negative as Greyhounds stated. You don’t penalize an ABC (Asset Based Carrier) for bringing its own equipment for its own boxes. Both NS and UP have chassis fleets for EMP, and UMAX 53’s. I opine expanded railroad chassis pools would be of great benefit.
So, who manufactures such a light dry van? I’d like to read about it.
C R England says they can get a 43,500 pound load in one of their rail reefer containers. So if we get 3,500 pounds out of the tractor-container-chassis combination we’ll be right there with you at 47,000 pound loads.
You’ve left the tractor weight out of your numbers. Intermodal can generally use lighter tractors than over the road trucking.
Hyundai has a 53 footer down to 11800 pounds. Wabash has their plateside down to 10900. With this year’s model. Our tractors fully ready for the road weigh in at 17k. Yes we have gotten serious on the weight cutting. A daycab is around 15k.