This may not be what you are looking for or the answer to your question but I thought I would add it anyways.
I have worked in two scrap metal yards and used to load railcars with scrap with a magnet crane in one yard and in the other I ran a shear that cut the scrap and from there it went on a conveyer belt into the railcars.We used to load about 13 cars of scrap per day.Rail cars are practically indestructable when it comes to loading scrap(especially those very old red santa fe gondolas).A lot of your scrap is small pieces that have been through the shredder or shear.Very large and heavy pieces that are too big to be run through a shredder or shear are cut to 6 feet or smaller with a cutting torch and put into a rail car and sold for a lower profit.Some of these pieces are shafts 3 feet thick or large gears weighing several tons even when cut in half.Needless to say you get very busy in a scrap yard and you don’t have time to lower things down gently into the railcar.You drop them into the car 5 or 10 feet from the magnet.You better have one hell of a strong railcar to take that kind of abuse.
Trucks are rarely used for scrap hauling because they can not take that kind of abuse.We would load a truck full of scrap for small foundries now and then but it was very expensive for the foundry.The majority of truckers did not like using their trucks or trailers for hauling scrap as it was very heavy and they always claimed it did some sort of damage to the trailer(mainly broken leaf springs).The magnet I used weighed around 4 tons and after you loaded a trailer you would have to pat the scrap load down to keep it from flying out of the truck.A maxed out trailer with weight plus a 4 ton magnet patting the truck down equals broken welds,broken leaf springs,and bent frames.Truck trailers typically are just made out of sheet metal.There was many times sharp pieces
Actually, a local scrapper “Omnisource” was acquired by Steel Dynamics a few years ago, and Omnisource was doing about 5,300,000 tons (ferrous) per year, which if based on a standard 250 day business year, comes to 21,000 tons per day. Multiple locations were involved, but that in itself does not seem to prohibit the basic premise.
FWIW, as a local observer I’m surprised to see Omnisource’s ongoing reliance upon it’s fleet of trucks, it does send a string of gons up the rail line towards Columbia City every now and then, but the trucks are out EVERY day
The Omnisource number includes brokered material which they never see. This material is bought from other dealers for direct shipment to the mill. Their processed material comes from 45 Omnisource plants in 7 states and Ontario.
Again, maybe you do not like the numbers I have used, fine so be it, lets scale it down to three unit trains per week, rather than just trying to avoid the subject alltogether with some dismissive rant about how you don’t like the numbers.
The underlying core to the scenario should still be worthy of consideration. Point being that the railroads try to avoid short haul because they need the longer mileage to offset labor. But in the scenario I outlined, the truck competitor is burdened even heavier with labor since someone’s gotta drive all those trucks, so the Railroad should be able to get the business at a profit.
Of course, there’s nothing that says that the steel mill can’t use rail’s quote just to “shop” their trucker into a lower rate structure. Isn’t that the main reason why people hold onto their rail sidings these days?
The problem is much bigger than the numbers. Mills generally prefer scrap by rail for several reasons.
They need the gons for OB loads. This is becoming less of an isue as 60’ rebar is allowed to hang over the cab and behind the trailer.
The scrap goes right to the melt shop where it is blended appropriately for the desired product.
3.The scrap is handled once before the melt, no loading from dock to melt shop, etc.
When a car is rejected it takes a radio call from the crane operator to the melt shop foreman and that baby is out of here. Unloading stops and it goes to the reject track on the next switch. If a truck load it has probably been dumped and must be reloaded to get it out.
5 less paperwork. One car equals about 8 truckloads. 8 scale tickets. 8 invoices. 8 quality reports. And for most small dealers, 8 checks.
However the need for various grades in various preportions makes your unit train improbable. As a previous poster has said, 13 cars a day is big production from one yard. If you don’t have No. 1 and No 2 arriving at the proper proportions then demurrage raises it’s ugly head.
Most scrapyards don’t have room to save up cars for a unit train of any size. That said I worked in a yard that shipped export scrap to the docks about 10 miles away. When the arrival date for the vessel was firm, we shipped 40-50 cars some days. It shut down production to move this volume this fast. All demurrage was for the account of the vessel.
cars had to be ordered months ahead and could not be unloaded fast enough for reuse.
I still think that you might be either confused, or perhaps missing one of the finer points.
Since this is a MERGED entity, one firm manages both ends of the rail link, so there will BE NO “reject” loads to the mill. The qc would be at the receiving end at the scrap y
[2c]comments from the peanut gallery. Something like this really should go by rail. consistent traffic.
Much more importantly local or state should try to subsidize the rail as this a whole lot cheaper than having to fix / maintain the roads for that much wear/tear.
In Minnesota, Duluth/Superior is about 65 miles one way from most of the iron mines. In addition to pellets going to Duluth, there are limestone (1.8MM tons/year), coal (700,000 tons / year) and grinding media (steel balls and rods) (25000 tons / year) going north to the mines. Note that the coal, limestone, and grinding media are handled as bulk, as are the iron ore pellets, and there is plenty of empty rail equipment moving north from near all the backhaul sources in unit trains directly to the mines for backhauls. Of these commodities, only limestone is handled by rail. The rest is handled by truck. Some of this is because of the quicker transit in freezing weather, some is because of more predictable arrival times, and some is just because it is cheaper. Some are just because a truck can unload itself and rail needs receivers’ employees to unload.
Same with transfer movements of iron ore concentrate. This once was a revenue generator for both Missabe and Great Northern. Now this traffic is 100% by truck.
The only coal being moved by rail on the Range is in unit train quantities to a generating station near Hoyt Lakes.
It would appear that except for the largest quantities, when the total cost picture is included trucks are the best overall economically for these short haul bulk moves.
I would imagine scrap being much the same way. In this case, the tonnage is high enough to justify unit trains and it is likely to go by rail.
For your point 1 OTR trucks can and DO haul 60 foot length rebar ALL THE TIME. We normally use a expandable trailer to haul it. It is NOT A PROBLEM TO MOVE IT.
Convicted one covered this this place is a MErged company and all the QC would be done on the Scrap end. For your 5th point 24 tons is 48 thousand pounds. Since when did the railroads come out with a 400 ton GONDOLA. Most of the ones I see around here are still 80 tons in cargo size MAX. If the truck is spec right and if you built the yard in MI and the mill with a MI train heck we can get 165K on the road on 11 axles. SO that blows the cargo weight issue out the WINDOW.
44 trailer tires with a nominal width of 8 inches each Each tire is only putting 150 PSI on the ground most Highway Concrete is Rated at 4500 PSI. Why Michigans roads are in such poor shape is SIMPLE called ROAD SALT. That crap EATS ROADS. Look at states like ND MT OR WA WY CO. They get MORE SNOW than MI however they do not USE SALT TO REMOVE IT. Their roads last longer and in the PNW like OR WA ID and such they allow 125K trucks with 7 axles on all roads. The wildcard the ROADSALT that corrodes the CONCRETE AND REBAR. That is the only differance. Idaho has Yet to rebuild I-84 acroos there since it opened.
convicted one, is it you experience that a company never produces substandard quality internally? You must live in a different world.
re: leasing vs demurrage, you are talking about a serious investment up front, minimum 3 trainsets.
Redore, iron ore is uniform in size and density as shipped and is relativly gentle to equipment. Scrap is irregular in all dimensions and weight. It has corners that will punch right trhu most trucks.
edbenton, you’re the real prize. Who cares about Michigan load limits? Michigan is becoming a industrial wasteland, full of vacant factories and mills. The opertion sure as hell would never be there. Also just because you can do it Michigan doesn’t mean you can cross a state line with it.
Scrap is irregular in size shape and weight. One of its desirable qualities is density, which reduce freight charges and permits heavier charge weights, resulting in less melt time. Dealers load scrap and beat it with a magnet to achieve the minimum load, usually 160,000 lbs. What truck can you beat scrap into with a 10,000 lb magnet? For some grades 20,000 will be a good load. The truck will have to be built like a railcar to last over 90 days at this. A piece of dump equipment with construction of 3/8 steel plate will have a tare weight well over 40,000 in the trailer alone. In normal states you are limited to 80,000 gross so basically you truck will eat up half of this. You still can’t pound the scrap in without desroying the tires and suspension. You can’t unload rapidly without extra handling.
Well you see, since this was my thread, I have the power to establish the “givens” [8D]
This thread (believe it or not) was not created in attempt to solicit tdmidget’s personal opinions of the scrap industry, or gain his blessings on his version vs my version of “reality”…[#offtopic] You see it was devised soley out of curiousity on the points (as I presented) of how short haul rail might price out compared to trucking where volumes are high enough to grab rail’s interest.
You seemed more intent upon trying to avoid the issue entirely with situational disqualifiers than to contribute anything of contextual value.
Perhaps you’d be happier watching old train movies and Gawfawing over how “real air brakes don’t work that way, all them there movie directors must be loco” and such [:-,]
Maybe it’s 25 years in the scrap industry. I know how scrap yards work and how steel mills work. If the voice of experience can’t wake you up the fact that the whole idea won’t work then carry on in la la land.
I have managed operations in yards processing over 10,000 GT per month. I am well familiar with this industry.
BTW I have hauled Scrap NOT ALL OF IT IS IRREGULAR. If your using a car shredder hate to tell you this suckers are like Gravel coming out and perfect for a walking floor trailer. See maybe your yard was not using the newest tech however alot do use the new tech WHY it srots out the ferrous and NON ferrous metals for them, My local scrap yard that might only produce 2000 tons a month has a shredding mill and only hauls it stuff in a Walking floor trailer to a Minimill. Guess what not one of their loads is ever rejected either.
Scrap metal is like petroleum, it’s not all the same thing. North Sea crude is quite different from Venezuelan crude, scrap metal is the same way. One yard can have various qualities of scrap metal to be shipped, and even if the receiver is equipped to use varying grades of scrap, that variety makes a unit train operation impractical.
Well, after reading Roy Blanchard’s “Shuttle train” article in the Sept. issue, my thoughts when crafting this thread now appear prescient. So much for the naysayers.[um]
Arranging the train service probably wouldn’t be much of a trick. There are plenty of examples of short haul - single commodity trains around. There is some coal to power plant traffic in PA that looks like this.
The biggest problem would at each end. Can you keep the 100 car train together loading and unloading or do you have to do a small mountain of switching? Building yard tracks to accommodate unit train operation won’t be cheap.
The main reason that eastern grain tends to run in 50 and 75 car trains and not larger ones is the capacity of the feed mills and elevators at each end of the trip.