In my opinion, it will be! Intermodal is now trucked to the railroad loading docks. Why would shippers use loading dock in Los Angeles when they can quickly reach Barstow? It should be remembered Los Angeles shipments to the east one way or another traverse Cajon Pass. Trucks zoom over Cajon Pass, trains one way or another take a long time. Recently, I saw a non-Intermodal long, long eastbound UP … the slowest train I ever saw! Cockroaches could have beet it! It should be interesting to see what Intermodal shipments use the future facility and how they get their!
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I read an article by a LA reporter on the truck drivers that haul containers from that port to the warehouse district east of LA. Many of the drivers were recent immigrants. Some of the dray companies had gated parking lots, and if the driver finished his shift but there were more containers to truck, the managers would not let the drivers leave in their cars. Some of the drivers were almost living in their cars. Seeing that Barstow is at least twice as far from the port and the supply of immigrant drivers may be drying up, who would be driving those containers up to Barstow?
The main theory behind BIG is that goods arrive by rail from the ports in 40’ containers, get unloaded into warehouses, get repacked into 53’ containers, and leave by rail as well. There is no drayage to and from the facility
So the target market would be stuff arriving in 40’ boxes where ALL of the stuff in a given box is destined for inland markets served by BNSF’s intermodal network. That’s not to say that everything in the 40’ box has to be going to the same destination, just it all has to be going to BNSF intermodal lanes emanating out from Barstow. In a sense, BIG is an intermodal classification yard kind of like CSX’s original concept for North Baltimore, except that the units being sorted (classified) are not whole containers, but the individual units of freight within each container. The “classification” consists of unloading everything into a warehouse and then loading items with a common destination into 53’ boxes.
Dan
(BNSF employee, speaking for myself)
Reading between the lines, that’s stuff in 40’ ocean-going boxes leaving the port, and the longshoremen’s oversight, on an expedited basis, being stripped at the remote, and presumably much more securable, location into 53’ domestic containers. Which are presumably going not to individual end destinations but to facilities like Rotterdam, where the 53-footers will be stripped as needed for cross-docking.
dpeltier:
So, what you are saying, is that 53-foot containers are unique to North America and thus International shipments arriving in this country are ALL in 40-foot containers, and for efficiency, need to be reloaded to 53-foot containers?
So, the shipping customers are NOT local to Southern California, but International ones? Do I understand things correctly?
The 53 domestic container where they’re great is doing breakdown of international shipments into distribution center sized loadouts. Here’s why they’re so good. You’re Walmart or Amazon with multiple distribution centers all over the place and you’re getting multiple 40 foor containers with say pools or Xmas decorations. Well you go to a secured warehouse breakdown those 40 footers into say 4 53s with all the other seasonal stuff for a distribution center. Then throw it on a train going closest to a distribution center and then spread it out to the stores with Walmart or directly with Amazon. This way you’re not sending 7000 trees to one place and then shipping them all over the place later you’re breaking down the quantities at each distribution point and if more are needed it’s not that far away.
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