Since this was published, a sixth shuttle loader has been built in the Land of Lincoln.
I’m amazed by two things in the story.
The Northern Crossing LLC shuttle facility is located in Mendota, IL - this is 15 miles from a barge terminal at La Salle. The BNSF can divert corn from barge to rail movement at a place that is only 15 miles from a barge terminal. That’s good railroading. That’s reducing overall system costs so that it’s cheaper to move the grain by rail, and making a good buck doing it.
The “contractor and millwright” at the Norstaw facility was from Forest City, IL. I grew up about five miles from Forest City. (we called it “For City”, I didn’t know it was “Forest” City for many years.) When I was around there, there was no contractor/millwright that could do such a job.
Forest “City” had about 250 people, but it always had the Rickett Grain Company with a decent sized elevator. This was a facility that trucked just about 100% of its grain to the Illinois River terminals at Havana or Pekin. Hopefully, a shuttle willl change that.
Progress and diversion of freight from barge to rail are wonderful things.
thanks for the info. That was a very good article. I was fortunate enough to stumble onto the Mendota facility about 18 months ago while a train was there. I took a couple of photographs and then noticed a man approaching me very rapidly.
“May I help you sir?”
Fortunately I had sold decals that were on the new BNSF covered hoppers and I used that as a reason for taking pictures. With that info he quickly stated they wanted large decals on the top of the bins. So, I got a tour. What a place!
Trucks were non stop in deliverying the corn to the terminal. The terminal used local farmers to “drive the train” during loading. All in all, it was an impressive terminal.
They never did purchase decals, as installation on top of the terminal would have been tough.
It would be interesting to know the economics of these terminals:
How many trains per year do these terminals load?
These terminals have basically made Illinois corn marketable to Southerwestern Markets. What kind of rate reduction would have been required for that to occur?
How much rate reduction occurs due to the 15hour loading limitation?
Profitability of both the movements and the terminals would be interesting to note.
With all of the new ethanol production being planned, plus movements of grain to feeder districts, what will be the long term forecasts for farmers? My brother in law farms about 1500 acres and he is very optimistic…he is also a railfan. We have interesting family gatherings.
Ken, what are your thoughts about the economics of these terminals?
Well, the quick answer I can give you without going through the tariffs is from what I know looking at the BNSF shuttle operations out of Montana (and we all know why I’ve done that.)
The savings to the BNSF are independent of the miles the train travels. They occur in the elimination of terminal expenses such as switching and equipment sitting around waiting to be aggregated into trains. These expenses do not vary with length of haul.
So it was a uniform $550/car reduction regardless of the length of haul. If the loading took place within the allowed 15 hours the BNSF knocked another $100/car off. If the unloading took place within the same allowed 15 hours the BNSF knocked yet another $100/car off. So if the loading/unloading took place as planned the savings to the shipper on a 110 car train would be $82,500. At 400,000 bushels per train this would be a savings to the grain distribution system of $0.206/bushel.
I don’t know what the train per year minimum is, but I do know that consecutive trains are required. You have to ship a series of “shuttles” to get the rate.
I don’t see corn as a viable source of ethonol. From what I know, it takes 1 gallon of fuel to produce 1.3 gallons of corn based ethonol. That ain’t gonna’ work. Brazil produces ethonol from sugar cane and gets a much better yield. Which is why there is a high import tariff on Brazilian ethonol.
We’re gonna’ have to find somehting better than corn to use. Besides, that corn is needed in those Texas feed lots to get my steak ready.
they are already building the plants to do just the corn for fuel . there is always more corn here than there is ways to use it. lately there has been 2 unit grain trains a week out of my neck of the woods. and this is just getting rid of the corn from last year. every now and then we get a few grain of wheat