I was looking at the discussion about the Cargo Sprinter.
And it occurred to me that the better discussion should be about the freight itself.
I’ll start the conversation with this observation that I’ve made before, In my humble opinion Norfolk Southern misuses road railers.
If you are going to put together a train of 50-120 trailers why not use containers. Road railers biggest advantage is not needing a lot of infrastructure. (Like those big cranes to lift containers.) The biggest disadvantage is the tare(empty) weight of the trailer itself. Even the Mk 5 roadrailers are much heavier then a conventional trailer. My understanding is the payloads are in the 43000 lb range. JB Hunt generally gets 45000lbs of cargo in a domestic container.
What I have failed to understand is why one can not have a lot of smaller terminals with this equipment. Canadian National, I read some years back, had original set up their Montreal roadrailer terminal by the expedient of simply putting down a layer of gravel. Total setup cost under $50,000.
One of the places I see a good use is this. From intermodal hubs to retailer Distribution Centers(DC) . Most of these DC’s get tremendous volumes of primarily international containers from railroads but generally the boxes get trucked the last 50 to 500 miles. If one were to instead reload these onto a modified MK 3 MK 4 roadrailer then run a 20-50 box train to someplace within 2 or 3 miles of receiver. The haul by road would be considerably lessened.
The advantage here is that places like Chicago, Memphis, Dallas, Atlanta, Name a Railroad Hub would considerable lessen the highway volume of these boxes.
A graveled lot is ok in the context of a truck stop, but as a transfer location ( dropping and hooking tlrs,etc.) Just gravel is highly problematic.
The major investments, after land is infrastructure. and the economics of scale become important. Smaller may be more managable, but you still have to take scale of facility operations into consideration. Forklifts to pick up the containers, empty and/or loaded can cost lots$$$$. Lots to drop loaded trailers on cost$$$. Then there are maintenance functions, how much and to what levels do you need to preform those activities ( in open or inside). Also to be considered is storage capacity for containers and chassises; And on it goes. In the freight business operations go beyond ‘simple’ very quickly.
Road railers have the advantage of not having the tare wt of the well cars. I believe a 5 well (10 container ) car tare weighs over 200,000# compare that to Road railer carrying extra tare of what? 10,000# or total for 10 of 100,000 #? That is a fuel savings of hauling the Road Railers over a well car? The weights are only estimates—Does anyone have the actual numbers?
As best as I can recall, the weight difference/ increase of a 53 ft. Mark V model RoadRailer over a conventional 53 ft. trailer is - amazingly - only like 800 lbs. or so, so 10 of them would be about 8,000 lbs. I’ll try to check on that and post a link later on today.
Trailer tare weight is going to be a moveable number. Different weights for each manufacturer; based upon extras constructed in the trailer ( # of crossmembers, flooring materials, materials. The materials used in a particular trailer; is it constructed with from aluminum, to steel, to fibre reinforced plastics (FRP). Refrigerated or Dry Van. and so on, variables upon the top of variables.
Anyway, you get the idea. Mostly an individual can figure a tare of an empty being some where between 9 K to 14 k depending on construction and actual trailer length and the specific on-board cargo restraint system, if any present.
With the TC trailers you simply factor the rail wheel set into the equation (and that is based on the particular model number of the particular rail wheel set, and how it’s equipped ( springs or air bags, etc.).
Yes, I do get the idea for a ‘regular’ = non-RoadRailer trailer - it’s just as you say, and I wouldn’t particularly trust any such number as being broadly representative.
But I would think that for a RR trailer, TC or Wabash National could tell us pretty closely what their tare weights are, for the couple of variations in the ‘Mark’ model series as you also mention. They must have a basis for saying 800 lbs. - so why/ what is it ? Or, I could just look up a photo of a RR trailer someplace - the tare weight should be stencilled on it someplace, right ?
I have looked on several manufacturers site for weight information on trailer tare weights. Could find all specs, but nothing as related to specific weights. In the TC services website http://www.triplecrownsvc.com/Bimodal.html there seem to be no weight indicators stenciled on the outsides of the trailers.
Admittedly, I’ve been away from the driving side of the industry for some time, but I never saw tares on the outside of the boxes. Only on some rental trailers were weights on the inside, but when weighed, I found them to be in error. I would suspect that the common practice is for the loading driver to get an empty weight certified before loading and again when loaded. This can protect the driver’s individual liability if weights of load in error.
I would like some of our members who are actively in the trucking industry to either confirm or deny. I never took anyone’s word on weights without check weighing myself. Trust, but verify!
As to the rail wheel assembly. I would expect that the 800# figure was from weighing or from a reliable resource within the Tripple Crown organization.
A 1997 STB decision on ‘‘costing systems’’ quotes and accepts the AAR as saying that the RoadRailer Mark V van bodies only weigh 8.1 tons = 16,200 lbs., and the rail wheel bogie portion weighs 5.8 tons = 11,600 lbs., for a total tare weight - on the rails, not on the highway - of 13.9 tons = 27,800 lbs. See the Surface Transportation Board’s decision in EX PARTE NO. 431 (SUB NO. 2) - REVIEW OF THE GENERAL PURPOSE COSTING SYSTEM, Decided December 5, 1997, Vol. 2 of the Surface Transportation Board’s Reports at pg. 754, particularly the section on RoadRailer Operations at pp. 3 -4 of the Decision (pp. 756 - 757 of the published volume), as found at -
When you say “modified MK 3 roadrailers” I take it to mean a roadrailer configured as a container chassis. As someone else pointed out these exist and are called by a different name that I do not recall at the moment.
You seem to be advocating a lower than stack train volume rail feeder/distribution service between existing high volume container terminals and places were regular but reasonably consistent traffic is available.
I would suggest that the type of equipment is far down the list of things one needs to consider. Lets use your distribution center as the other end of the system.
First think of terminal issues. This comes in two flavors; the existing big hub and your dedicated terminal near the customer. The big hub is designed to do two things, unload inbound trains and get the containers on the road, and the reverse move containers from the road to train. As now operated to perform those tasks the container is driven to or from the loading machine which moves from slot to slot as it works the train. Containers come and go to a temporary storage area, then to and from the road.
While I do not know what a lift costs in such places, I suspect something in the range of $100 is in the ball park. Re
Mac, that’s an excellent, well thought-out, comprehensive, and well-composed analysis of this portion of the logistics chain. Thank you. [tup]
Merely as a point of supplemental information: Someone else here - greyhounds, as I recall - once posted that the cost of each lift was in the $10 to $20 range. Considering that such machines can do around 30 lifts an hour - 1 every 2 minutes or so - that would imply a cost or revenue rate of around $300 to $600 per hour. Since that operation involves the big expensive machine, a qualified operator, and a ground man, that range seems reasonable to me on its face, and not too cheap - probably leaves a considerable amount left over to pay for the land, pavement, and other improvements. That takes nothing away from the essence of the analysis or the validity of your conclusion
One point that’s been made more than a few times here - typically, but not exclusively, by Railway Man - is that the traffic flows and volumes in the ‘lanes’ are mostly influenced by the Origin-Destination (‘‘OD’’) pairs of which the lane is the central part. NS/ Triple Crown Services has clearly focused on a few lanes where it can aggregate trainloads of RoadRailers running between OD pairs that have significant volumes in those lanes. The problem is that to expand beyond those few lanes inevitably gets involved with the smaller volumes and more random, chaotic, anarchistic, free-form, inconsistent, and unstructured traffic flows between the myriad of shippers and receivers of other OD pairs - kind of like ‘herding cats’. Until that can be accomplished to build the volume needed, any RoadRailer lane extension/ expansion will ‘starve’ for lack of sufficient volume.
Maybe what would help would be for NS/ TCS to identify potential shippers with regular volumes for a significant portions of a RoadRailer trainload, and then loan or give them a set of some RR equipment to use for an extended trial period. A lot of those shippers may be more accustomed to dealing with the freight broker-truck owner/operator business model now prevalent in the industry, which may be so fragmented that it precludes aggregating the necessary volumes. Since this might put the freight brokers out of business or at least reduce their ‘value-added’ claims to a cut of the proceeds, they’re not going to promote it - sot he railroad will have to find an ‘end-around’ for it.
One other comment on Road Railer service. If you are staying close to terminals you can generally do a lot of stuff with day cabs as opposed the heavier (longer) tractors with a sleeper.
By way of contrast on truck tractors a lot of day cabs weight in the 16000 lb range as opposed to a Freightliner Century 19200 lbs w full fuel. Peterbilt 379’s are even heavier. A Volvo VN 770 is 23000lbs before fuel.
If you shorten the haul were the truck was going home every nite you do not need the sleeper.
If the dray at either end is longer than a day’s round trip, then it’s probably not well-suited for that intermodal route. It would likely be more economical to just stay on the road the rest of the way - there are so many miles being run at truck costs, that there are less for the rail portion to save on and make up for the IM costs and provide for a profit margin and any savings, etc.
Good info on the truck cab weights. So, a 16,500 lb. tractor plus a 16,200 lb. RoadRailer Mark V totals up to 32,700 lbs. = 16.4 tons tare, leaving - for the usual maximum legal gross vehicle weight of 80,000 lbs. - 47,300 lbs. = 23.6 tons for payload, which ought to be very competitive. The added weight of the sleeper and full fuel tanks for long hauls - neither of which are needed for short drays - seems to be more than the additional tare weight of the RoadRailer.
Finally, Pennsylvania has a 1990’s law amending its Vehicle Code toallow 90,000 lbs. for intermodal truck-tractor combinations. I’ll have to look it up to provide a citation and to check the wording, but my recollection is that it wasn’t comfortably clear that it would apply to a RoadRailer - only to the usual container on chassis combinations.
Interesting website - thanks for providing the link here (I believe greyhounds has done so before in other threads - no, I’m confusing that with RailMate - see http://www.railmate.com/ ).
Anyway, I’ve often wondered why RoadRailer hasn’t developed other variants, specifically a container chassis version, mainly for the box containers - though the others, such as tank containers, could also be used. Since the container is capable of supporting itself by definition, that ought to reduce the structural loading requirements on the RoadRailer chassis somewhat.
Alternatively, why haven’t RoadRailer designs been developed for other high-weight, long-distance bulk or frequent traffic, such as tank bodies for fuels and various other fluid commodities, hoppers for cement, plastics, and flour, open-tops for trash, and even flats for lumber, ties, machinery, etc. ? There must be good reasons - probably with
“Roadrailer” is a trademarked name used by Wabash National Corporation for their Dual mode trailer system. Railrunner is a similiar but competing product built by another company. I think it’s fair to say that a Railrunner chassis is slightly heavier than a conventional “highway only” trailer chassis due to the attachement points for the rail bogie…
§ 4974. Permit for movement of containerized cargo