"The Port of Benton will receive $1 million from the state to build a freight distribution facility in Richland to help small farmers ship Mid-Columbia produce throughout the nation.
Although the project often was compared to the Railex facility that began shipping from Wallula to New York last fall, the Port of Benton project will be strikingly different.
Instead shipping through only one route, like Railex currently does, Port of Benton officials said their facility will be capable of shipping produce anywhere Union Pacific or BNSF travels throughout the U.S."
Somehow this sounds more like the sourse for shipments to destinations all over, rather than a unit train moving under special rates to one destination. I suspect Railex won’t lose much sleep over this.
The thing is, there’s only so much produce to go around, and this gets back to that old argument of maintaining carload service on branchlines vs consolidating at a mainline for unit train operations. Richland is closer to the main produce growing area of Washington than is Wallula. If the growers are forced to truck their produce 25 miles to a rail load facility instead of 5 miles to the local carload facility, then they’ll probably opt for the nearest viable rail service center if rail costs are roughly equal. Railex will have to lower their shipping costs to keep up the needed volume for unit train operations, they’ve got a lot invested in this new facility and they can’t afford to lose business before they’ve even ramped up to normal operations.
I doubt if the rate will be the same for say to Albany, NY, almost certainly the rate will be higher, since either BNSF or UP will have to sort the car. Service will also be slower. Another possible problem will be railcar availability and quality.