This is great! If my well hadn’t have shut down, I’d have missed this.
Look at what you’ve said here. The reasons you list for success have nothing to do with the equipment. They could do the same thing with standard containers and/or trailers. If anything, the use of RoadRailes causes problems. What problems is the equipment solving?
This is great! If my well hadn’t have shut down, I’d have missed this.
Look at what you’ve said here. The reasons you list for success have nothing to do with the equipment. They could do the same thing with standard containers and/or trailers. If anything, the use of RoadRailes causes problems. What problems is the equipment solving?
This is great! If my well hadn’t have shut down, I’d have missed this.
Look at what you’ve said here. The reasons you list for success have nothing to do with the equipment. They could do the same thing with standard containers and/or trailers. If anything, the use of RoadRailes causes problems. What problems is the equipment solving?
Gee, I don’t know which of your posts to reply to first.[:-,]
Roadrailers have a significant advantage in tare weight. No flatcar frame and deck to haul around whether loaded or empty. Given the same locomotives, a roadrailer can accelerate quicker and stop in a shorter distance also. I thought the brake issue was fixed several years ago with larger hoses, but Zug says maybe not. The lighter overal weight to haul a certain cargo weight also translates into fuel savings. Using less fossil fuel seems to be all the rage, now.
Another advantage is lower terminal costs. You don’t need large MiJack cranes (rail or rubber tired) to assemble/disassemble a train. The original yard TC used on the West side of Fort Wayne was just stone placed flush with the railhead.
Question: Why would NS have “siloed” Triple Crown’s RoadRailer operation ? While this may involve speculating as to the motives of people 20 years ago - and since then, as it could have been changed at anytime in between - the ones that make the most sense to me are (in no particular order):
Roadrailers also are more secure than conventional COFC/TOFC. There is no way you can (easily) break into a toadtailer (my term for them) when it is part of a train. You have about 6-12" between the individual trailers. Unlike traditional intermodal that gets broken into every time you stop the train for a signal. It also doesn’t take much to build a roadrailer terminal. And they don’t pay the greatest for their workers, so they can do a lot of the work cheaper than the union RR employees.
But it comes down to ease of use. A traditional doublestack train can come into the terminal, the conductor or utilityman can make a cut on the inbound block, and double the train to the outbound block. Hang a marker if neccisary, do the brake test and gone. A yard train can spot the block of cars on the loading tracks, if the inbound train didn’t already do it. While there is another company that does the actual loading and unloading, the RR makes the moves, inspects the cars, and fixes any defects.
Roadrailers, you have to have the roadrailer guys there to make all cuts and doubles. They have to be there to do the airtests. They have to be there to cut out a trailer. Something happens on the mainline, you just can’t call the RR car department. You have to get ahold of the roarailer guys to have them come out to assist.
As far as the brake problems - one of the theories I’ve heard from officials is that having the bogies (wheelsets) sit in the dirt, mud, stone, and/or gravel may be a big part of why there are brake troubles with it.
Another observation. On my old roadrailer train, we would pick up the train already built from a shortline. Then we would take it into another triple crown yard to pick up more trailers. (the yards were farily close, so we never made a set-off).
But it was never a simple pickup. We would have anywhere from 3-6 different blocks of trailers, each going to a different terminal out in the mid-west. So you had to add the inbounde trailers to their respective block, as well as fix any blocking errors the first terminal made. For example, my original train delivered by the shortline may look like this (I’ll just use letters to represent the different terminals the trailers are bound for):
engines-A-B-C-D-A-C-D-E- eot
our pickup at the next terminal would include trailers for A, C, and D.
So we had to match the As, the Cs, and Ds. On top of that this terminal would also want to get all the As Cs, and Ds from the starting train lined up together. That way, when we left we had:
engines-A-B-C-D-E-eot
That meant a LOT of switching at the terminal. Each with the required safety stops so we didn’t give Triple Crown their first 28’ roadrailers. That is a lot easier to do if you’re not holding onto, or have to temporarily stash away any extra non-roadrailer railcars.
It’s mostly #4. What Triple Crown does is completely different from what anybody else at the RR does. They sell truckload service dock to dock. If you did it within the RR, you’d have to have a new group anyway, so why not do it outside and:
Save RR retirement (Tier II costs the RR about 15% and the employees 4.5% over and above SSI)
Not “annoy” the truckload guys you’re wholesaling to.
Make it easier to get into joint ventures with others. TCS was 50% Conrail for about a decade…
To greyhound’s point about Roadrailer’s failures in other markets. He’s spot on. Every single lane application has failed due to lack of critical mass. Only the NS Ft. Wayne hub and spoke network survives. In recent years, TCS’s growth has been equipment
Thanks to Don for #4. (“So are there any other valid reasons why this “go-it-alone” philosophy has continued this long ?”) and Zug for their insights (not the “toadtailer” label, though ! [(-D] ) I think I know the shortline you mean, too . . .
[quote user=“greyhounds”]
Well, here’s a RoadRailer competitor with open top trailers for aggregates, trash, grain, etc. It can take a 46,000 pound load on the road and meet the weight laws. That’s impressive.
This equipment has been tested on the CP and elsewhere. The last I heard they were waiting approval of FRA “waivers” so it could be commercially operated. (It’s not standard rail equipment so it needs “waivers”.) I can see the need for safety regulation, but this thing is just beng held up for no dicernable reason. Even “reasonable” regulation causes real problems.
This RailMate equipment is designed to solve the fatal flaw of RoadRailers. From the get go RoadRailers have been positioned to operate in RoadRailer only trains that are seperate from the rest of rail traffic. This makes their adoption very difficult.
Most RoadRailer routes have failed commercially because it is virtually impossible to get enough business from one origin to one destination together on a daily basis to support a dedicated intermodal train. The services were introduced, marketed, operated for a while, then shut down because it became obvious that there was never going to be enough business to make them economically viable. There are a few routes that can support such trains. Very few.
RailMate avoids this fatal flaw. It is designed to operate in the rail network, not seperately from that network. You can put a RailMate block on the end of a standard double stack/intermodal train. Heck Fire, you don’t even really need to put it on the back of an intermodal train. The “Tremont Local” could handle RailMates behind the covered hoppers and car boxes if that was a desireable thing to do.
When the dang government finally moves the dang paperwork, the RailMate concept is going to open up__&n__
I can not keep up here. The good news is that my well has been repaired and I have running water again. I don’t want to talk about what
Re: “I went to see Jim McClellan speak at the Northwestern University Hagestad Sandhouse Gang. He had been an important NS VP and the subject of Rush Loving Jr.'s “The Men Who Loved Trains.” I had always thought he was one of the reasons NS stuck with RoadRailer. After his presentation I stuck up my hand and asked a couple of RoadRailer questions. I found him to be surprisingly dismissive of RoadRailers.”
Sorry you got such off-handed responses. Just have to rationalize that top-notch business people don’t always make the best teachers or public lecturers, and vice versa. - a.s.
Al,
I don’t think it was off-handed. I apologize if I gave that impression with my writing. I certainly didn’t take it as a personal slight.
What I was trying to say here was that I was surprised that a former senior officer of the railroad with the only “successful” RoadRailer operation in the world came across as being “not all that supportive” of RoadRailer operations. At least that’s the way it seemed to me.
I know other members of this forum were there and they can chime in if they want to.
[emphasis added - PDN.]
Well (sorry about the pun there [swg] ), glad you got your well fixed, and that we’ve engaged you on this thread in the meantime.
Three thoughts/ responses:
1.) What you say about the mantra of RoadRailer is believeable. If people can be indoctrinated with the advantages of a system, I suppose they can equally well be brainwashed with the disad
NS and CPR just drop off their trains (toadtailer and stacks) in the River Yard (the 5 tracks alongside the main line next to the mill/casino). Then the PBNE comes down the hill and picks up the trains and takes them up the hill and into the intermodal/tailer yard. They also bring the outbounds down into the River Yard for the CP and NS to pick up.
I agree with your math and reasoning. What makes drayage expense the “intermodal killer” is its relative size in comparison to terminal expenses. A decent terminal will certainly be below $100/lift - more often in the area of $50/lift. A local Chicago drayage charge will run around $225. As you move away from the terminal the dray charge goes up dra
First, I’d like to compliment Zugmann on his knowledge. He understands what’s going on about him. And he can effectively communicate his understanding. That’s kind of a rare thing. And it seems he gets his understanding by just by looking at things and thinking them through.
Second, here are some published dray rates to/from Chicago intermodal terminals.
http://harryhlong.com/downloads/rates.pdf
These are rates into/from Wisconsin. Wisconsin does not have an active rail intermodal terminal in the state. That opens the way for this trucking company to charge $635 to move a container from Green Bay to a Chicago intermodal terminal. It’s about 200 miles. Plus whatever fuel surcharge they apply. That’s over $3.00/mile.
I’ve read that the Wisconsin and Southern is looking into establishing intermodal service in Wisconsin. Such a service would connect the state with the intermodal network at Chicago. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of $3.00/mile loads to make such a service pay. Especially if it was operated with bimodal equipment that could keep terminal costs down.
Thanks, greyhounds. I don’t even pretend to begin to understand the economics of it all, I just had a front row seat to the operational side of it. I held a regular roadrailer train for a few months last year. Roadrailers never seem to have a great operating expense. The one terminal I spent all my time at just had 3 paved tracks, a few forklifts and a couple jockey trucks. They didn’t even have a traditional repair shop. Just a few trailers to store parts and an outside(!) work area. Add a trailer or 2 for offices, a few utility body work trucks, air compressor for airtests, plenty of room to park bogies and trailers, a few Pepsi machines, and Viola, you’re the proud new owner of a roadrailer terminal.
Before I go to bed, I had a few more thoughts on why the roadrailers may have never caught on. The first involves control, and I’ll illustrate it with a story (because its more fun that way). This one was told to me by the roadrailer shift supervisor that I always worked with when in the roadrailer yard. One day he was working, getting a train ready. A trainmaster from another yard came around to throw his weight around. This trainmaster, however, wasn’t the normal trainmaster that dealt with roadrailer issues in this yard. I forget why he was there; it may have been about a derailment they had, or delays encountered. He jsut showed up and started yelling at this roadrailer supervisor. The supervisor responded by first asking “WHO are you?” Trainmaster told him. Then the supervisor basically told this trainmaster to pound sand and get lost. After all, he isn’t the roadrailer supervisor’s boss. Using a second party to do all the roadrailer work may save the railroad money, but at the cost of control.
How is this different from conventional COFC/TOFC service you may ask? Well, when the sec
I’ll add that when Roadrailers were “the hot new thing” the other “hot new thing” was the conversion of domestic TOFC into stack COFC.
The economics of the international stack business were so good, it pushed the RRs toward the known, high volume, highly mechanized terminal intermodal lanes they were already comfortable with. The lure of Roadrailers was to get into smaller volume lanes with quick, dirty and cheap terminals. This seemed riskier and the economics seemed less certain.
NS did not have a lot of high volume lanes and big mechanized terminals (not like ATSF and CR, for example), so TCS was a play to get them into intermodal in a larger way. The risk was mitigated to a large degree by using TCS to move autoparts in smaller lanes to augment their bread-and-butter carload auto parts network.
It sounds like Zug and Oltmann are zeroing in on an answer. It’s that roadrailers were a niche filling version of intermodal. Triple Crown has just about filled filled that niche. As Paul asked, where can Triple Crown go next?