More Questions.[:D]I have noticed multiple times that containers wearing railroad logos (and other logos) will have a big old ugly patch with the letters NA and below CS. what is NACS. Is it like conrail, to keep intermodal going on railroads who can’t make enough money owning containers. Also… are railroads with NACS patches alowed to own unpatched containers why has this NACS been patching CN laser and BN America containers? here are a few examples:
NACS - North American Container System, is a railway owned pool of Domestic Containers, a small number of 48’ Containers, but mostly 53’ Containers, that freely operate around North America (similar to TTX and Railbox). Originally it was owned by BN(SF) and CSX, but eventually everybody but UP joined. Its competition is the “EMP” Container pool, originally owned by the UP and NS, later CP joined this pool. Most railroads have since decided to stop supplying Containers and these two Container pools will eventually disappear when the current inventory of Containers are retired from damage and age.
The reason for the relettered containers is that when the pool was formed the railroads supplied their newest containers to the pool. They never bothered to repaint the lettering, merely patching the logo and lettering.
I see. Thanks.[:)]
Conversely, I have seen several STAX containers that have been patched to CSX Intermodal, and I also see that the “dark future” scheme (dark CSX blue with yellow lettering) has also spread to CSXI.
No, only Class I railroads are members of NACS. The Reporting Mark “NCGU” is assigned to Genstar, an equipment leasing company. I believe that NACS sold the container and it is now a patched Genstar container.
Why does intermodal equipment have such a high turnover rate?
Why were names and logos patched over after only 1 to 2 years on some trailers and containers?
One short life term example is the J.B. Hunt and Santa Fe Quantum Service. That brand name lasted for just over 1 year before being painted over.
Andrew
The Stax Program (a UP - CSX product) and not to be confused with the potato chip product of exactly the same name - died an early death about a year ago after a few very miseable years of utilization. As you noted, the CSX Stax boxes became CSXU’s. THe UP boxes went to an assigned program (sort of leased to) the Hub Group as UPHU reporting mark boxes.
Intermodal is a fairly volatile business sector. Boxes have a 10 yr lift and alliances and marketing programs often don’t last that long…or somebody gets the idea for a better mouse trap and changes the name and parameters of a program.
I’ll contradict one note above. BNSF bailed on the NACS program last year… or tried to do so. Swift agreed to take on the 3,800 NACS 53’ boxes, got around 600-1000 units into it and quit doing so. BNSF still has the rest and I’ve heard rumor that Swift is giving theirs back. NS still runs the NACS program and UP - NS have no current plans to drop the EMP fleet. In fact NS added boxes last year and UP stands firm to their commitment to the program. We’ll see if the add more boxes - I think they’ll wait and see how utilization goes, given the privately owned 53’ containers entering the market.
Joint marketing arrangements are very fragile things. What seems great to this set of managers and lawyers today may prove to be odius to another set of managers and lawyers tomorrow. Also market conditions change. Some O/D pairs lose importance and so does the associated marketing arrangement. On the other hand some O/D pairs become so important on their own that the joint arrangement becomes a burden rather than a solution. {ie. contracted price becomes significantly lower than market price.) Paint is cheap.
dd
Actually this is an encouraging sign, because it shows that shippers and railroads are trying new things. Many more ideas fail than are successful, but if you try enough different things you are bound to be successful sooner or later. Didn’t Edison try hundreds or thousands of times before he got the light bulb to work? Where would we be without all the inventors who were willing to endure many failures before finding success?
The changes in intermodal seem subtle to casual observers.
It takes a lot of information to understand how much intermodal has changed in just the past 15 years.
Andrew
I see what you are saying. When do you think they’ll be successful? and does the “u” at the end of container reporting marks mean intermodal?
The “U” at the end of the Reporting Mark indicates a Container, a Trailer has a “Z” as the last letter of its Reporting Mark.
gotcha.[:)]
Does anyone know why some posts show up twice and others don’t?