In 1976, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad pretty much ended service to its small town piggyback ramps. However, it seemed like a pretty good system offering trailer to dock service across Middle Tennessee. Today, if you want to ship intermodal you have to get your container or trailer to Nashville and CSX’s Radnor Yard.
Why would it not work for me to load my own trailers? Lets speculate the Nashville and Eastern opened a ramp in Cookeville (80 miles east of Nashville) and I was a non rail shipper. And, lets say I had two truckloads regularly going to Tacoma, Washington.
It would seem that loading two trailers on a flat car, the Nashville and Eastern then taking the trailers to Nashville and interchanging with Radnor’s intermodal yard would be an easy way to get these trailers on the national rail network and on their way to Tacoma (minus the cost of two drivers and numerous tanks of diesel fuel).
Of course, getting the trailers back from Tacoma empty or loaded might be a problem. But it seems to me this scenario would work in bringing many over the highway loads back to rail. Is the small town intermodal concept really dead for loading trailers? Or was closing down small town ramps a way to “rationalize” and justify abandonment of branchlines?
Small town TOFC was probably a mistake from the outset since it treated TOFC as no different than carload freight. Consider that many of these ramps did not generate much TOFC business and any rail service was probably slower than using highway to get the trailer to a major terminal.
In the example used, the 80-mile trip from Cookeville to Nashville is better served by a highway haul since it is short and probably avoids the trailers waiting to be picked up by N&E’s local.
But if speed were not an issue, I can’t see why my two hypothetical trailers would be no different than a boxcar load of my products going to Tacoma. The appeal for the railroad is that my business can go on rail without having a siding.
The Tennessee Central started TOFC service in 1965 serving small cities such as Crossville, Cookeville and Lebanon. Lebanon was just about 35 miles from Nashville’s Radnor Yard and a connection with the L&N. So that was a pretty short haul for Piggyback. According to TC reports, piggyback contributed to the bottom line of the ailing railroad. Then, L&N took over in 1968, piggyback gone 8 years later and the line put up for abandonment in another 8 years (1984).
If a company built its own ramp and hired its own driver to load the pigs on flatcars…how would this differ from a boxcar load from the viewpoint of the Nashville and Eastern? When my two trailers get to Tacoma, they are unloaded at the lift and the consignee picks them up. Once again, short of the backhaul, this appears like a good way to gets lots of non-rail traffic on rail.
Going a step further…if a small city had a way to lift containers would this attract industry with no sidings? Gather containers from around the area, assembly these into carload type traffic and let the short line deliever to the class one. The big hurdle hear is a small town intermodal yard and crane. But, once on a Class One container train the rest is academic!
The Indiana Railroad has done similar on a larger scale with Central Indiana customers and the Idiananapolis hub. Traffic to and from Asia.
How much of that ‘lost’ revenue covered the real costs that were involved in securing that revenue. Beginning in the 80’s with the passage of Staggers, railroad began applying cost accounting principles to the traffic they were handling - the traffic whose revenue didn’t exceed the costs of securing that revenue were ushered away from the traffic mix.
My carrier had a number of small time ‘intermodal’ locations - the revenues of which barely covered a fraction of the costs of the business being handled.
Today’s carriers bring their revenues to the bottom line - pre Staggers, not so much.
16-567D3A that is the argument that the industry has established. Your points are right on…however, if we replace the word “intermodal” with “carload”…Then individual carload traffic should be the same money loser as individual intermodal loads. (based on this long standing argument)
In my argument the shortline treats the arriving empty flat just like it would an arriving empty gondola for scrap loading. The shipper loads the trailers just like the scrap yard loads the scrap. The shortline then delivers the 2 loaded trailers to Nashville just like it would deliver the loaded gon.
Once in Nashville, the loaded scrap gon is switched into the proper manifest freight and the flatcar of trailers is switched into the proper intermodal train. We have not reinvented the wheel here. So, why is one 8 wheeled railcar a valid way to ship and the other 8 wheel railcar is not?
You are going about this in about the most awkward way possible.
The questions always are what will it cost to do this vs. do that.
There are two alternatives; direct truck or dray to Nashville. Truck is always the competition. Direct truck will be the better service, so the rail offering has to be cheaper and the slower it is the lower the rate has to be AND the rail rate must cover all costs. There is a reason the railroads have organized the IM biz the way they have, they have to drive the cost low enough to be more than price competitive.
Your proposal has lots of costs that individually probably would not kill the notion, but in the aggregate certainly do.
First problem is that the railroads are operating two separate networks, a carload network and an intermodal network. Your proposal requires a crossover between networks with no obvious thought about what cost in time and money is required to accomplish that. At best case if the carload and intermodal yards are adjacent to each other, your flatcar has to be switched out, set asside, and then transfered to the IM yard. One or two hours of switch engine time at $250 or so an hour. If yards are any distance apart fugitaboutit. Your flatcar is also a redheaded stepchild at the IM yard because instead of blocking the outbound train as trailers are loaded, the IM switcher, if there is one, has to cut your one car into some departing train. That is 30-60 minutes delay in departure and occupancy of very expensive, very valuable, IM terminal trackage.
If the shipper is going to own the trailers, they have to be railroad strong, you just can not take any old highway trailer. Another problem is that there are no IM flats set up for circus loading any more. They have all been converted to lift on/off. That means you have to have a picker/packer. You might be able to buy a decent used one for $500K or lease fo
Directly above answers #8 and most of 1-6. The point of the exercise is that the something for nothing tribe needs to get a grip on reality. # 7 is negotiable, but the freight trucker is expected to pay for all or a good part of 1-6. Mechanical people and possibly other folks are gonna have to be on site and won’t be productive for 75-90% of the day, 7 days a week on the site. Shortlines have some flexibility, but only to a point. Unreal expectations.
Your logic makes sense in terms of local intermodal ramps. They don’t work like carload freight, partly because you just can’t put as much stuff in/on a truck as you can with a railcar. Railcars are economical partly because they can haul a ton of stuff.
That being said, I’d like to see some regional intermodal feeder facilities. I live in southern CT, and I’m fed up with all the drayage going through CT from Newark/Bayonne to god knows where. Since there is no rail connection until the cross-harbor tunnel is built, they could use feeder barges for now, or an intermodal rail connection via Selkirk and Worcester, and maybe drop down to a couple of regional yards. In theory, they could be barged and re-loaded to COFC in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, or floated across on COFC on a barge, but either would probably be way too expensive and kludgy.
In the future, I’d envision these feeders using COFC through the tunnel and up the NEC, much like many European countries do. Then, JB Hunt, HUB, and other domestic intermodal operators could offer medium-distance domestic COFC shuttles that go through NYC to get truck traffic off of our roads.
It’s too bad that there isn’t a way to economically offer container delivery directly to rail-connected industries, but it would probably be rather uneconomical, and the industry would have to figure out how to unload them.
I think one of the biggest spots for growth in rail shipping are bulk transfer yards where stuff can be transloaded, and one rail car might be able to handle several truckloads going one way or the other. This would likely vastly increase the number of industries that can use rail service, since often something goes from an industry with rail service to one without or visa versa.
The efficiency looks really cool when you are standing at the ramp and you watch the COFC roll towards the class 1. After that, not so much.
A friend was talking to me about the feasibility of a small local ramp at a fair sized town that was served by a shortline that connected with a class 1 railroad. The town was pretty good sized and was about to be on a new interstate route. Teh idea was to attract truckload business, consolidate it and then steel wheel it long distance. Sounds great (and right up the line about this discussion).
Once they haul the car to the class 1 what happens? Most intermodal routes are E-W and the class 1 route they connected with was N-S. The class 1 had no existing intermodal network on that route. There was literally nothing to connect with other than a loose car freight train. To get it to a route with an intermodal presence would require going 100 miles north or south and then through one or more hump yards.
Lets say that this local ramp generates 50 boxes a day. Sounds great doesn’t it? that five double stack 5-packs. Neat. Except that 11 boxes go to LA, 6 boxes to Oakland, 8 to Atlanta, 12 to New York, 5 to Seattle, 3 domestic to Houston, and 5 domestic to Chicago.
11 boxes is two 5 packs,
6 boxes is one 5 pack,
8 boxes is one 5 pack
12 boxes is two 5 packs,
3 boxes is one 5 pack
5 boxes is one 5 pack
5 boxes is one 5 pack.
What you really have are nine 5 packs, some of which are single loaded and some have empty wells. Lets say the ramp can get only single platform cars, that would mean 27 single double stack patforms. And they are going in multiple directions on different lanes.
Granted. What is said is true. But the Piggyback model worked for small town ramps when it was first initiated. The Tennessee Central annual reports credited piggyback loads as a ray of hope in creating additional traffic and revenue for the terminally ill carrier. The big difference today is intergrating this concept with the efficency of intermodal traffic lanes. And it indeed fails for all the reasons mentioned.
But doesn’t an 89’ flat with two trailers as carload freight have any potential?
There are abandoned spurs all over the land. Take one of these in Cookeville, Tennessee and build a crude dirt and gravel ramp at the end of it (or an elaborate concrete one). Purchase two former intermodal trailers (there are plenty). Train one of my current hypothetical workers to load circus style. Request a pig flat. If unavailable work with the Nashville and Eastern to equip one as such. All of these, with the exception of equiping the flat for circus loading, have been paid for by me…the shipper. Heck, I might even pay for the car modification!
Now here is a new twist. If another shipper in Tacoma has done what I have in Cookeville (i.e. built his dirt ramp for his trailer loads)…Then, route the car to this shipper’s ramp and pay his man, who he has trained to unload circus style like mine, to unload my trailers for the Tacoma consignee to pick up. There is no hurry and the “carload of trailers” never even has to enter any intermodal lane. It travels from Cookeville to Tacoma just like a boxcar!
Volume indeed. Intermodal is driven by economies of scale. And intermodal is relatively complex and requires alot of people, coordination,big terminals, and heavy equipment. Conversely, trucking is about as simple as it gets. Load truck… get Bubba to drive it to destination…unload… and done. Simple all around… and simple to price as well. Intermodal may shave off a few dollars on some lanes where density makes the numbers work, but the price is greater complexity and more variable service levels. But as an HO scale modeller, I love the small ramps and piggyback trailers!
Two words - fixed costs. Land, infrastructure, insurance in case Bubba rolls the trailer off the flat car while circus-loading the trailer at the small town ramp…
Trailers these days are almost exclusively 53’, so it would be one per 89’ flatcar (and intermodal 89’ flatcars are becoming increasingly rare), unless you buy more specialized equipment.
Will your cost savings by increasing the rail haul and decreasing the truck haul by 80 miles pay for all of these investments? I doubt it. The guy to inspect the loaded flatcar (and presumably trailer) will have to drive from the intermodal terminal, be paid to sit around and do nothing all, or quit as soon as he gets a better paying job (which probably will not take long), so that will eat all of your savings.