Nifty!
I don’t really understand why a seperate point is needed to transfer the meat from the car or container loaded at the meatpacking facility to a ship capable container. I believe that for a number of reasons the shipping borne containers are electrically cooled, but I would not think that a dual energy source unit would be that more expensive to build and operate.
As Greyhounds is fond of pointing out, hundreds of meat trailers leave my area daily for the West Coast. Perhaps the main purpose of this facility is transloading highway trailers instead; the drawing certainly makes it appear so.
Dak look where the plants are located for meat packing places like Liberal KS scattered across NE IA. The closest IM yards are hundreds of miles from those places on a routine basis. The drayage costs alone would be killer. Then you have the tare weight issue of the container chassis combo. A good speced out reefer carrier can carry almost 46K of product. If your using a container your giving away almost 2 tons of cargo. Next you can custom mix at your transload warehouse differnt cuts for a different customer across the ocean. Most reefer containers that are electric powered their powerpacks have a limited fuel source around 20 gallons on the chassis. A normal fuel tank on a trailer for a reefer is between 50-100 gallons. Next is if the unit breaks down most Thermo King dealers do not know how to repair the Marine aka Container based units. You give them the diesel powered ones they can get you up and running easily.
Just an observation from someone in the OTR industry whose boss is getting ready to buy a couple reefer trailers. So I am studying up on what we are in for and not liking it at all.
Perhaps a single refrigerated container that could operate from the Midwest to the Far East is a “bridge too far”, regardless of how it goes to the west coast. Let’s accept (at least for now) that transloading has to occur at the export point.
However, I continue to believe there is profitable business to be had for the rails in the US portion of the haul. Tyson’s plant in the Sioux City area has a daily kill capacity of 12,000 head of cattle. The majority of that meat is further processed into boxed beef before shipment, and the plant accepts beef from other Tyson plants to be converted to the boxes.
In addition the Seaboard-Triumph joint venture has just completed a new pork plant at Sioux City with capacity of 11,000 head per shift. For now it is a one shift operation, but there are plans to add another at some point in the future.
That is a whole lot of meat that leaves the area every day. The majority of it goes south then then east or west on I=80.
Both plants are near rail mainlines – the Tyson plant already has a mini-switchyard on the property. However, as a starting point if you dray the product 90 miles to Council Bluffs, you are on UP’s Overland Route – a straight shot to Oakland (1700 miles). Council Bluffs has a large underutilized UP switchyard, so creating a loading facility for TOFC or containers should be easy.
The problem I haven’t worked out in my mind is the backhaul, but all of those truckers must have the same problem.
12,000 head per day is a whole lot of dead cows. Off the top of my head I think that many would result in 40-50 truckloads just of cowhides per day before anybody even got around to hauling the beef. Sioux City is a center of red meat production with even more (muc