It’s clear that for long haul trips (few hundred to thousand plus miles), trains clearly have the advantage over trucks.
Now what about the scenario where you have 2 shippers - relatively close, let’s say 100 miles apart, and both have rail access where they can load the goods into boxcars. How do the economics of that trip by train stack up as compared to that trip by truck?
The train is generally non competitive. (special conditions may alter this).
The railroad will have terminal expenses that are not present in trucking. They will have to pick up the boxcars, handle them in yards at both origin and destination, then deliver the cars. The truck can just drive from origin to destination.
In terms of line haul cost per mile the train should be more economical. But there have to be enough of those lower cost line haul miles to off set the additional terminal expenses. 100 miles generally isn’t far enough to do the trick.
Not sure about the economics in terms of money. The box car can carry more weight and has more cubes. The trucker can not haul as much as the railroad but could pick up and dliver the same day. This did happen all the time in the automotive freight.
I am not sure but it looks like much of the coal in southern Indiana is short haul. The mines seem to be close to the power plants.
I guess with a commodity like coal, because you have a lot of it, more than trucks can carry, and because of it’s weight it would be economical to short haul it.
Take a look at the Deseret Western RR. A shortline custom built just to haul coal to a power plant. It has no other purpose - it’s not even connected with the national rail system.
Short haul box freight doesn’t make economic sense, in most instances, for either the shipper, consignee or the carrier. That being said, there are numerous short haul service that the various carriers operate. Aggregate and Trash are two prime forms of product that lend themselves to these short haul situations. The volumes are typically 25 car loads per day or more and typically only a single crew is used for the round trip. Get the loaded aggregate train at the quarry and take it to the distribution facility and drop it for handling by the distribution facility, pick up the empty train at the distribution facility and return it to the quarry for loading. Typically there are 3 to 4 train sets of equipment in this operation as the rail crews are operating under the 12 hour limits of the Hours of Service Law and cannot wait around either facility for the parties to perform the loading or unloading operations.
In my career I have seen hauls as short as 1/2 mile, between industrial customers located in the same serving yard. As I recall, this movement was two tank cars per day of industrial chemicals between the producer and the user, the producer had many other customers in addition to it’s neighbor. Both of the short haul customers in this instance were handled by the same yard crew.
Bottle Trains are another short-haul example. I think the Indiana Harbor Belt (IHB) in Chicago used to have one, but I’m really not sure if they still do or not.
You are correct regarding the bottle trains in NW Indiana/Southside of Chicago. Those trains were typically 5 or so loads and moved less than 50 miles.
Not sure about alternative modes of transportation.
It is my understanding that ADM in Decatur, Il has a short haul operation thru NS of corn into their plant. Cannot give you details about it.
Anything is possible in transportation if the situation and value of the service warrents the investment and returns.
ed
Do you know if those bottle trains still run?
There are many more variables that need to be considered. I’ll give you one example that involves one of my own steel shippers… This shipper has direct rail access to their mill…they even own a couple of locomotives for shunting in the mill. Yet they also load hundreds of trucks a day…I handle about 5500 truckloads a year for them…and that’s just a drop in the bucket. Why do they use trucking and rail? Mainly transit time…often convenience… the receivers are metals distributors who aren’t located on a rail line… sometimes even cost…in this difficult economy some trucking rates are very competitive with rail…especially for loads to/from the southwest…and into the midwest states.