Railroads are part of the nation’s world’s logistics system. To understand how they fit in to the logistics system we should understand the total system and the various parts of that system. A major component of that system is warehousing. This is where produced goods are stored until needed. Often goods are shipped to a warehouse before being shipped to a customer. The railroads must fit in to the shipping needs.
Modern, successful retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon are based around kick-butt logistics systems that keep goods moving and keep costs low. This is how Amazon operates a warehouse. I find it amazing.
I wonder what fun Kiva could have with material handling outside the distribution center by adding evacuated tube technology to their repertoire?..From their website… Who We Are… Kiva Systems LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com. At our core we are innovators and technologists. We started a revolution in the material handling industry by thinking differently and applying technology to fulfillment operations. We take ownership. We invent and simplify. We hire and develop the best people. We insist on the highest standards. We think big. We have a bias for action. We dive deep and we deliver results… What We Do… Kivans write really good software that scales. Kivans design complete solutions that deliver business value. Kivans design robots, work stations and all kinds of innovative hardware. Kivans manage a complex supply chain and build the robots and gear we design. Kivans install our solutions quickly and efficiently. Kivans support the solutions we deploy and ensure design performance is actual performance. Kivans dream up new algorithms, hardware and processes that improve on what we did before. We do lots of cool stuff and we have fun.
I was reading STEEL TRAILS, The Epic of the Railroads by Martin Stevers (Grosset & Dunlap 1933) the last couple of days. A couple of pages were devoted to the LCL warehouse at Proviso yard, and part of the discussion was the carts used to bring packages from the Chicago Merchandise Mart. What Amazon is doing sounds a bit like what the C&NW and the Merchandise Mart did, but with robots instead of workers.
Interesting book, heavily focused on the business of running a railroad back then, with lots of examples why the RR’s employed ~1,000,000 or so at the time. The main emphasis was that the RR’s provided mass transportation, with comments about LCL and branchline traffic not having much of a future. He was enthusiastic about the containers as used by the NYC.