There are, on average, 15 trucks of apples shipped from Washington to Florida each day. I would reckon there is some orange juice going the other way. You know, for revenue loads both ways. (California oranges are table fruit, Florida oranges are juice.)
Thanks for the post. It’s wonderful to see this traffic beginning to find its way back to the rails again. When I worked for the U.P. at Cheyenne in the '60s and early '70s, one still saw (conservatively) a dozen or so solid trains of reefers – “Green Fruits” – every day at the height of the season. In an excellent article in Trains a few years ago, Mark Hemphill explained how this fell apart – painful reading.
Most of the new rail services are still too slow – they brag of times like 7-8 days to some eastern markets – and they’ll have to step that up to get a significant percentage of produce trucks off the road, at least for the “soft” fresh stuff.
7-8 days for Juice when it is Packed will Still be way to Slow sorry talked to a few Buds of mine that run Team Service and they go Florida to Seatlle in less than 4 days for Fresh Juice. For Frozen Juice yeah your fine.
The only reason your getting the expansions is Simple Fuel Costs and the so called Lack of Drivers no the Drivers are out there but the Carriers are not willing to haul loads for a Loss anymore into areas that have NO BACKHAULS and Florida is Notorious for having NO LOADS OUT OF THERE. Let the IM Companies worry about the Empties out situation. Sorry but Carriers would rather have a Load out than sit for a week waiting for a load.
What do you mean by “No Loads out of There”? You see, there’s all this orange juice. 85% of US orange juice comes from Florida.
But I will congratulate you on selling some OJ. In response to your post, I just went to Wal-Mart and bought a 1.75 liter bottle of “Simply Orange” brand Florida orange juice. (“Fresh Taste Guaranteed” and “Not From Concentrate”) Simply Orange is a company started in 2001 and is in Apopka, FL.
The bottle is marked “Best if used by Oct 04 2012” So apparently pasteurized orange juice (Don’t drink the unpasteurized stuff unless you squeeze it yourself) has a rather long shelf life. (That’s 58 days from when I picked it off the shelf) This long shelf life makes the added value a four day highway transit vs. an eight day rail transit minimal. It can be easily overcome by a lower rail rate. Cold Train can bring the tremendous economics of double stack rail
If I may pick a nit, a very small amount of California citrus are made into orange juice and other products. The opposite is true for Florida citrus.
California Citrus Producers (page under construction)
Good analyses, greyhounds, as usual, esp. on the “value-added” (if any) and additional costs of the several transit time options. Problem is - as I see it - is that this traffic segment is an agglomeration of many small niche markets / Origin-Destination pairs, none of which are trainload size - hence, no interest from the railroad marketing folks. That leaves various Intermodal Marketing Companies to fill the void, and again it seems there’s generally a lack of ‘critical mass’ to establish a viable integrated network that works. Not to say that it can’t be done, but it seems to be agonizingly slow - going on 40 years now ?
- Paul North.
I asked a Reefer Driver I know that runs the SE alot and goes to FL what he does for a Backhaul out of there. He goes I deadhead out of there into AL for Chicken. Everyday there are thousands of trucks going INTO Florida and maybe 200-300 loads out of the state. There is Next to No Industry in there and Unless the Produce is running or you have a Contract Back Haul your going to Sit til you can get one.
Called my Buddy that was a poster here what would happen when he was dispatched to FL. He would get to Loads to Winter Haven all the time and then be Bounced to either GA or AL for his Next Load. His company would Bounce him 100’s of Miles to get him to a next load to get him out of the Black hole area.
Have agree with the premise that Ironeage2006 makes referencing the delivery and backhaul situation out of Florida. Unless a trucker has a previously established connection ( with a Broker or a Load Origination, in advance of the delivery) getting out will, at best be problematic. It will then depend on such tings as no problem getting rid of the inbound delivery.
Then, providing the previously scheduled pick up is as promised. You are on your way; generally with a load that will barely, cover expenses to get back into your Company’s area of normal operations.
The question then becomes “WHY even go in there?”. Generally, there is the enticement of a very good rate going in to Florida, that comes about by bargaining with who ever has the load, and how bad it is needed. Florida has a long standing reputation regarding its available loading back out of State. Many loads (i
OK, you said there were “NO LOADS” out of Florida. Now you’re saying there are several hundred per day.
What Florida does produce, and ship out, is 63% of the US citrus crop. Most of this moves as juice. Mainly orange juice along with a small amount of grapefruit juice. The juice production is concentrated in a small area of the state near Tampa Bay and Orlando. CSX should own this business.
There is no economic reason to truck orange juice from Florida to places like Chicago. The fact that trucks move this stuff is a failure of the CSX marketing people.
There are certainly more loads of freight in to Florida than out of Florida. That has to be built into the inbound rate. But there are good outbound loads to be had, and CSX should get off its duff and get them.
The question: Is CSX willing to haul refer boxes out of Florida at a rate that has to compete with truckers taking
Hi Jay,
I’ll rephrase your question to be “Is the railroad’s marginal cost lower than the truckers’ marginal cost?” I’ll maintain that it is. Given that, CSX should be more than “willing” to haul reefer boxes out of Florida at a truck competitive rate. Doing so will put money on the CSX bottom line.
But, I’m going to have to wait until after the maintenance window to elaborate.
Have a good evening.
Great post as always Greyhounds and hopefully this will open up some more opportunities for railroads to capture more perishable business. Really wish, though, that the CN could use something like this to haul the meat and meat products out of western Iowa and Waterloo like you had touted not so long ago.