ORIGIN: Buffalo, NY
GATE HOURS:
M 05:00 - 22:00
Tu - F 07:00 - 22:00
Sa 07:00 - 11:00
Destination:
| Day | Cut Off | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | M 2200 | W 0600 |
| Tuesday | Tu 2200 | Th 0600 |
| Wednesday | W 2200 | F 0600 |
| Thursday | Th 2200 | Sa 0600 |
| Friday | F 2200 | Su 0600 |
| Saturday | - | - |
| Sunday | - | - |
DESTINATION: Buffalo, NY
GATE HOURS:
M 05:00 - 22:00
Tu - F 07:00 - 22:00
Sa 07:00 - 11:00
Origin:
| Day |
|---|
You wonder why I keep saying that OTR drivers have a day advantage over IM on any market out there. 8 hours at least at my bosses company can be up to 560 miles down the road or almost to Buffalo from our terminal. Think about that in the time from the cutoff to the train leaves one of my solo drivers can just haul it there. That’s why IM is used for low priorty goods or stuff with a known delivery schedule. There is no way in hades I would trust it for some of the stuff we do haul. Also carriers use it to save cash you can move a trailer cheaper with IM than you can with an OTR driver when you figure in labor fuel and other costs. You save about 20 cents a mile.
Almost like there’s business for both. Fancy that.
Nobody is at war here.
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Cut off to departure and arrival to available are usually one or two hours. …Unless your name is UPS, then you are allow to crash the gate and your boxes are available on arrival.
NS train 205 typically rolls thru NW Indiana around 5pm…so either it is about 12 hours late or 12 hours early.
My guess is 12 hours early.
205 is also a long distance local coming out of Boston area with pickups and drops along the way including Buffalo, Taylor, and Toledo. It is usually a pretty good sized train - 150 + containers and handles UPS.
It appears NS does a pretty good job with certain priority lanes, including the Chicago - New Jersey with a couple of TOFC trains that are heavily patronized…lots of refer units on 20E and 20K. Chicago to Rutherford is another priority lane.
There are lanes which intermodal can fill time sensitive movements, others where it handles the lower priority stuff.
The key is know your market and try not to be everything to everyone, unless you have that capability.
Edit:
The NS 23k just rolled thru Chesterton and has an “availability” of 5am. THis train also comes out of the Northeast - probably from Boston area. Today’s 23K had 327 containers, all domestic by my count…EMP, JBH, Hub nearly all. That is a lot of trucks not on I90 across Northern Indiana.
Ed
Are we talking 2 hours?4 hours? 8 Hours? from Cut Off time?
-Does it depend on the terminal? In Syracuse they have one overhead and two forklifts. In Harrisburg they have a dozen piggypackers. Seems that the Iron Roads concept of circus style ramps drive on and drop off was faster. The Roadrailer was fast as well and I got a first hand tour of this when they were in Rochester NY. Time does not seem to matter to railroads these days. Just unload the Giant ship from China at the Port of LA of cheap discount and doller store stuff and hope it gets to the shelves a week before Christmass, The Fast Conrail US mail trains have not run in 20 years.
Given that the gate closes in Buffalo at 2200, that’s the gate cutoff. It’s hard to bring something in after the gate is closed and locked. On the other side of the coin, for arrivals, being as they don’t open until 0700, that’s the earliest availability time. Logically, the trains in question depart sometime after 2200 and arrive sometime before 0700.
Being a retired CSX Intermodal employee at a 24-hr M-F ramp (plus weekends), I know that the gate cutoff for a train -was- generally 2-3 hours prior to scheduled train departure, sometimes longer, depending on when the train had to be fully loaded, inspected, verified, and ‘released’ for pickup.
Our cutoff times were based on when we had to have the train released, not train departure. Release times are set by Jacksonville, not us. Recognize, too, that at the ramp I worked at, it was in intermediate stop where one or more blocks were added. Therefore, the outbound train has to arrive at the yard, make a cut somewhere in the middle, leaving cars on the main, make pickups from 1 or 2, and occasionally 3 tracks (sometimes making a cut on a track…set brakes, etc on the cut), then get back to their train on the main, make the hitch, pump up 9000+ feet of air, and do a brake test. Oh, every now and then the car knocker bad ordered a car that has to be pulled out of the middle of a track and put on the RIP track! The train crew is definitely NOT happy about those! Don’t forget that it may require the conductor to walk the entire length of the train to verify the brake test if no ‘utility’ men are available at our yard. That could be 9000’ plus!! An experienced crew could get it done in about an hour. Obviously, a single, full track pickup is the fastest and can be done in about 45 minutes. Add 15 minutes for each additional track after the first. Arrivals can be just a complex. Usually, the ‘big’ arrival each night would fill almost 3 tracks, but sometimes spill over into #4. Sometimes, there
Great description of intermodal yard operations.
I would only add a couple things. Back in the 90s, I measured the loading cycle time at South Kearny. It was 90 seconds to two minutes from box to box. Mostly TOFC with ancient piggy-packers. I also remember riding some Conrail intermodal trains that had intermediate work. The schedule usually allowed 45 minutes to an hour. Pick up was on head end so that you didn’t need a brake test. Just pump’em up and go.
Even starting late a trucker in a “slow” truck can catch up and pass an IM train. While I was trucking, I got one load assignment that was to pick up a trailer that wasn’t loaded onto its designated train and to catch up to and pass the train to have that trailer waiting to be put on the train halfway across the country.
CSX’s Fairburn Yard in Atlanta, GA to the BNSF yard in Kansas City, KS, in a truck governed at 65mph. The train had at least an 8 hour head start.
I ran legal on hours and made Memphis in the first day. The second day I passed the train somewhere between Memphis and Kansas City. I dropped the trailer at BNSF at about 2PM.
While you did beat the train’s time. You didn’t beat the train’s effective cost for individual boxes.
Very true, as proven by the long-haul trucking division of our company losing a major contract to our intermodal division. The company made lots of money, the shipper saved lots of money and the long-distance drivers lost out on lots of juicy Ohio to west coast loads.
And that is the name of the game in logistics - repeatable service - minimum cost.
Depending on the operator, the side loaders we had/still have can probably load a trailer in a bit more than 90 seconds. I recall one operator who, when faced with a UPS trailer the driver had spotted backwards to the hitch, picked it up, did a 90 degree turn, put it down, circled around the trailer and picked it up again, and as the boom was lowering the trailer and he was turning at the same time, slid it right into the hitch…all in I think less than 2 minutes - at least it seemed that way. He was the exceptional operator. I was already trying to get the ‘last numbers’ for where the UPS drivers put their trailers, so I was intrigued by watching the ‘maestro’ at work. Unfortunately, after 2-3 years, his drinking got him fired.
Trucking the trailers due to everything from a washout in New York to train annulments was always interesting. I’d call Jacksonville, they’d contact some team driver company and they’d send drivers to come and take them. One time, there were 8 UPS trailers to go and only 7 contract drivers. Fortunately, a CSX Trucking driver volunteered to take the last one. He left 2 hours after the 7 others and beat them to Chicago by over an hour! When he got back, he proudly told me he was overjoyed at beating the other guys and he got a bonus as well! I didn’t ask what his log book looked like. At other times, they’d set u
My hubby and his late father made a fortune for their carrier in the late 90’s by being there for the BNSF on UPS shipments to Southern CA or Northern CA or Chicago if needed. They had the endorsements needed aka Doubles Hazmat all the good stuff and when BNSF missed a UPS trailer for anything they were in the area for back to Chicago BNSF did 2 things had the trailers hooked and ready for my hubby and fil at the IM yard and a free spot on the next train back for their current trailer to Chicago or out to LA for his boss.
Sure he got fired for drinking - or for getting sober. Back in the day, I saw many that performed their duties correctly and responsibly while probably being well over the legal limit to say nothing of the Rule G limit. When they went on the wagon and got sober - then the troubles started.
The men and women who work in all sorts of nasty weather putting the cargo container connectors have lost fingers,limbs and lives. To add insult to injury most are non union contract workers not covered under the Federal Railroad Retirement and Disablity see-
October 24, 2011|By Frank Warner, Of The Morning Call
A man was killed Monday evening in an accident at the Bethlehem Intermodal railyard in south Bethlehem, police said.
Preliminary reports are that the worker was pinned at 7 p.m. between two vehicles in an area where truck containers are moved to railroad cars. Police did not immediately have details of the Coke Works Road