In a recent editorial, the Roanoke VA Times, while discussing the possibility of reducing future oils supplies, mentioned the following transit times from San Deigo, California to Portland Maine:
Truck 4.5 days
Barge 12.5 days
Rail 25 days
Inasmuch as there are no canals or rivers for the barges, I assume that they are talking about a trip, by water thru the Panama Canal.
More realistically, could it be possible, in a situation such as along the Mississippi River, say from LaCrosse, Wisconsin to New Orleans LA that a shipment by barge reach its destination in half the time by rail?
well, by barge, they might just be calculating distance by speed. you can make it quite a ways up from the gulf, into the northeast, but im not sure how far exactly. but in that 12 days, youd probably only average about 3 miles an hour.
I would really call into question that 25 day number for rail as being bogus. Priority rail shipments may not be able to beat door to door long haul trucking, but they should be close.
Personally, I would love to see long haul trucking outlawed, in favor of an intermodal network using trucks for regional pick up and delivery with trains covering the long distances. Slightly slower delivery times, but decreased highway congestion and fuel consumption.
25 days for a single car shipment coast to coast isn’t unreasonable. It’s more like 5-7 days for an intermodal shipment.
For a bulk shipment of the kind that would move by barge, a RR would get it there much faster than 25 days. For example, Powder River Coal moves from Wyoming to Georgia in about 7 days.
Truck with team drivers can do coast to coast within 70 hours flat (Less than 3 days) door to door delivery.
Intermodals or other special trains can haul 400 truck loads worth of stuff coast to coast within a week and has enjoyed good support from shipping and trucking to get the product delivered (Or picked up) That is pretty fast for a crew of two with supporting cast.
Barges are kind of special.
The Mississippi river barge (Or any navigateble **Spelling? water way) is quite capable of beating a fleet of trucks and possibly capable of carrying whole trainloads of corn, coil steel etc… up and down river.
The area between Florida and Baltimore (And points north/east) is unique with barging. Sometimes it is better to barge 400 containers several hundred miles as it might be cheaper and faster than having to arrange trucking or even moving the ship too far inland like to the Port of Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay.
If you only have say… 100 boxes then trucking can do it cheaper.
To me it is a compromise between all three. I dont see long haul trucking as dead, but it is severely stressed from outdated rules and deeply entrenched cultural problems that promote very fast transits at expense of driver fatique and laws limiting service.
Rail is pretty strong but they need ships or trucks to get to and from the customer as most of the nations’ trackage that once served every industry reachable by rail in all corners has been ripped up and thrown away in favor of the almighty dollar.
Shipping (Barging) will always be supreme in sheer capacity but sometimes barges can go where the big ships cannot or will not. They will need trucking and trains to get the cargo delievered.
Dont forget air freight. When I order a package such as a computer hard drive I prefer air. If faced with a large amount of freight, I would use all three modes as necessary to get it in.
I suspect someone has reversed the rail and barge times.I also am suspious of using barges to transport anything coast to coast. I am not saying it is not done but this has traditionally been done by ships not barges. Bad weather makes the open ocean very dangerous for barges. Ships are faster and safer. I would be sceptical that a barge would even make it down the mississippi faster than a train. Many railroads got there start by putting the original barge canals out of business with faster transit times. While trains have gotten faster barges have not …[2c]
I believe the writer of that article has been sipping on a little too much fermented corn squeezings with his time estimates.
4.5 days for trucks is reasonable San Diego to Portland, ME.
12.5 days by Barge would get the Barge to the Panama Canal…but not to Portland, ME. Ocean carriers such as Sealand offer 20 day Cross Pacific Service and 10 day Cross Atlantic Service and 30 day serivce to Indian Ocean destinations… 25 days for the approximately 6000/7000 mile Barge route would seem reasonable…not 12.5.
On rail transit 10-15 days would be the norm, depending on the number of humpings that would be required for the route and if the shipment were operated in inter-railroad run-through operations or if it was operated to a rail gateway and then interchanged to the next carrier for it;s reswitching to either destination or the next carrier in the route…
At one time, a car running from San Diego to Portland, ME could be handled by upwards of 10 Rail Carriers…each of which would receive the car in a ‘daily’ interchange cut, classify the cars for their own purposes (which would take a day), transit their road and then either switch the car for interchange to the next road or classify it for industrial delivery (which would take a day) and then deliver it to the next carrier in the route to repeat the process. In todays railroad world, such a move would ‘probably’ only involve a maximum of 4 carriers…A short line servicing the Shipper delivers the car to a TransCon that transports the car to a ‘Mississippi Gateway’ for delivery or run-through to one of the Eastern Trans-Con’s who would haul it to a Short Line carrier for delivery to the consignee.
When Industrial traffic types are talking about productivity for their Private or Assigned car fleets and they mention a figure such as 25 days, they are generally refering to a car cycle takeing 25 days…from the time they originally ship the car until they can ship the car again…after it
My youngest son has been a truck driver for over 20 years. His employer is one of the major trucking companies that has switched their long distance hauling ( I believe over 800 miles) from over the road to rails, either containers or trailers. His job is to shuttle empty trailers or containers from the rail yard to the customers and back to the rail yard, he has not been over the road for several years. He indicated to me that it takes just one additional day for a load to be picked up and delivered using rail than it did using trucks for the entire trip. The reason his company has switched is: 1- lack of sufficient over the road drivers, 2- lower costs for the company. The main consideration is reliability of time, they want the loads to arrive each trip on the same number of days. they are not interested in a load taking 5 days one time and 6 days another time or 4 days another time. They must be consistant.
truck 4.5 days
rail 12.5 days
barge 25 days seems more realistic?
if,when panama canal is enlarged to accept mega container ships,the west coast ports may loose moocho buisness.the gulf states may be the big winners then,n the rrs serving those ports in the gulf.that would lessen all the congestion on the bnsf,up lines west from chicago. i think.
Don’t hold your breath on the panama canal being widened. I beleive it has reverted to the panamaian’s or will soon. I do not see them having the capital or resorces to make that happen.