I live in Martinez California and we have the Martinez sub of the Roseville line for UP. You can see several trains daily made up of empty & full containerized loads running through both eastbound from Port of Oakland, and westbound empties heading back to the Port of Oakland for transhippment back to point of origin for refilling. Common occurence there.
The Box:
How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
perhaps the title should have read
“How the Shipping Container Destroyed the North American Manufacturing Industry and Made China Rich”
version 2 will be Entitled “Where have all the workers gone (Mommy why does Daddy not have a job anymore)”
version 3 “Lead Paint and the American medical industry” or “Who killed your pet?”
HOW CAN ONE TELL IF THEIR UNLOADED CONTAINERS? DO THEYLACK THE METAL RIBBON AR OUND THE DOOR LATCH?
The cost of return of the empty container was never main reason for the slowness of its adoption. That was factored in right away, just like returning empty coal hoppers or empty stock cars or empty reefers. Many trucks are also empty for haul-back. James Hill fretted about the one-way haul from the Orient and the Northwest over a hundred years ago. The Great Northern bought many hopper-bottomed boxcars.
Being from Seattle area, I see many containers in use for east-bound merchandise and canvas-covered containers in south-bound garbage haulage. Garbage hauling is not a two-way business, either.
The longshoremen and teamster unions did fight containerization for both union and union members’ benefit, but never for the “higher purpose” of saving general American jobs from foreign competition.
There are even convincing accusations that criminal elements in transportation didn’t like the containers because they could no longer pilfer from shipments, until they began to realize they could just as easily take whole containers from large shipments.
Because of strong union influence on politics, they were able to delay and hold back the tide of massive containerization for twenty years from the late sixties through the early eighties. They were able to bring about Federal laws and union rules that reduced the benefits and possibilities of swift container passage through the chokepoints of the major ports.
The thawing of the Cold War international relations with mainland communist-ruled China were another/the major factor in the explosive growth in containerization.
Reynold
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bawbyk wrote the following post at 02-25-2008 7:40 PM:
The Box:
How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
perhaps the title should have read
“How the Shipping Container Destroyed the North American Manufacturing Industry and Made China Rich”
versi
Small containers (box, reefer,and ore) were used on the narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon.
The Hawaii narrow-gauge railroad on Oahu lasted long enough to see containers.
Reynold
This from the March issue of Wheat Life magazine. “Container shipment of U.S. wheat exports is one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. agricultural market and is opening new opportunities around the world for wheat buyers and producers alike.” Expansion of the Port of Lewiston (Idaho) container dock is also cited. Lewiston “is the most inland port in the western U.S. It is a leading containerized grain port and expanding the dock will double barge capacity and help allow containerized wheat shipments to keep growing.” There are a lot of hungry folks in Asia and around the world. This is becoming one of the best ways we can send those boxes back over the ocean loaded rather than empty.
I read a while back that the Twin Cities and Western was doing tests with running flat cars w/ INTL containers on them out to points in central and western MN. They’d get them loaded at local grain elevators, put them back on the train and would shuttle them back to BNSF at St Paul for shipment to Seattle and thence overseas. This was a way to “create” and international intermodal ramp in western MN in a somewhat more virtual sense, w/o the Class 1 carping about needing a full stacktrain of business to be worthwhile. Good for the farmer, seemingly good for TC&W and good for CPR or BNSF.
http://www.northstarintermodal.com/
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North Star Intermodal, LLC uses the RailRunner Terminal Anywhere technology to establish a network of terminals on the Twin Cities & Western Railroad line, where the truck-based containers are shifted to rail - and, as appropriate - back. Twin Cities & Western Railroad connects its rail traffic to the Canadian Pacific Railway for transport to international markets and Hapag-Lloyd Container Lines manage the delivery to its ultimate destination. NEWS RELEASE: First Containers Loaded, Shipped at New Intermodal Facility April 19, 2007 - The wave of the future reached Montevideo beginning March 20 when the first loads of value-added agricultural products were delivered to the new North Star Rail Intermodal Facility and transloaded into waiting shipping containers… |
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I’m interested in containerization of bulk, agricultural commodities from a modeling standpoint; however, even after reading the article "NEWS RELEASE: First Containers Loaded … ", I’m still unsure as to the mechanics of loading them. Is the container tipped on end, allowing it to be filled through the end doors? Or, are there alternate doors on the roof that I’m not aware of? Anyone out there know the particulars?
If you have a sharp eye you can judge by how compressed the springs are on the trucks.
I’ve never seen any containers tipped or stood on end to load. A cardboard grain door is inserted, and the grain is either blown in or augured in. Sometimes a “super sack” – a big plastic baggie – is inserted first, such as for oily commodities like cottonseed. To unload, a hole is punched in the cardboard and the grain pours out. Eventually some pour soul has to get inside and shovel, or the container can be tilted. I’ve seen it both ways.
RWM
From what I’ve found out, Railway Man’s right on the loading n unloading of grain containers. It’s much the same way that boxcars were done in the past. Neither was a pleasant task [seen both ends done].
Some seed companies started using containers several years ago for bagged seed shipments to n from Brazil. Unloading them was another unpleasant chore [which I’ve done] even though they were on loaded on pallets. Most the time we’d have to restack onto another pallet to unload them after a rough trip north.
inch