Beef and pork production is centered in the Midwest, the Texas Panhandle, and SW Kansas. The killed meat has to move long distances in large volumes to eastern and western population centers. It now moves overwhelmingly by long haul trucking.
These experienced railroaders are out to change that. This IS an intermodal system. But it’s an intermodal system specifically geared to handle perishable commodities such as red meat. Traditional IM has some problems with most perishable products because they load very heavy. A container/chassis combination will weigh more than a highway trailer and limit the amount of lading handled by intermodal in comparison to over the road movement. This limitation negates some of the rail advantage for long haul movement.
Using a different type of rail car and a different container system solves that particular problem. These reefer cars do move in scheduled intermodal service, as they should.
Now chicken, which is the most consumed animal protein in the US, is produced mainly in the Southeast. So it’s gotta’ go on a very long haul to the west coast. There, these guys can get an eastbound load of carrots or something. They’ll eventually get to the chicken, I’m sure.
The best of box cars and intermodal, using the long established pallet! I like the roller system, it looks to be faster and smoother than using a forklift, which other reefer companies are using. Now if they can equip trucks with the system, so the need for a large warehouse is minimized… I wish them great success!
Thanks for finding and sharing ! [bow] I sincerely hope you’re enjoying having been proven right, or at least visionary (albeit a few decades later . . . ).
“The rail car holds a total of 80 pallets for a combined product weight of 170,000+ lbs – the equivalent of up to four truck trailer loads.”
This operation has apparently concluded that a little more effort in trans-loading the pallets from truck to railcar and back at both ends is less of a handicap / cost than the tare weight penalty that would be incurred with an operation that used for equipment either an refrigerated intermodal container or refrigerated RoadRailer.
Interesting that their first route ends just a few miles from me, in Bethlehem PA (Northampton County - but just a few miles north of Bucks Co. - see below), most likely at the Lehigh Valley Rail Management intermodal yard (former Bethlehem Steel site) - which is a ‘neutral’ switching/ terminal road that both NS and CP can access. It also routinely (daily) handles carload, piggyback, intermodal container, and RoadRailer trains, and has several large refrigerated warehouses in the adjoining industrial park or close by.
A sign I saw there recently (and have a photo someplace) touted that the industrial park’s roads were private, and could accommodate overweight trucks without penalty - i.e., these pallets per greyhound’s Original Post, John Kneiling’s giant container transfer trucks, or the higher-than-normal weights of intermodal containers (see below).
I wonder if these guys knew - or relied on - the unusual Pennsylvania law from 1994 that allows trucks carrying intermodal co
“The rail car holds a total of 80 pallets for a combined product weight of 170,000+ lbs – the equivalent of up to four truck trailer loads.”
This operation has apparently concluded that a little more effort in trans-loading the pallets from truck to railcar and back at both ends is less of a handicap / cost than the tare weight penalty that would be incurred with an operation that used for equipment either an refrigerated intermodal container or refrigerated RoadRailer.
Interesting that their first route ends just a few miles from me, in Bethlehem PA (Northampton County - but just a few miles north of Bucks Co. - see below), most likely at the Lehigh Valley Rail Management intermodal yard (former Bethlehem Steel site) - which is a ‘neutral’ switching/ terminal road that both NS and CP can access. It also routinely (daily) handles carload, piggyback, intermodal container, and RoadRailer trains, and has several large refrigerated warehouses in the adjoining industrial park or close by.
A sign I saw there recently (and have a photo someplace) touted that the industrial park’s roads were private, and could accommodate overweight trucks without penalty - i.e., these pallets per greyhound’s Original Post, John Kneiling’s giant container transfer trucks, or the higher-than-normal weights of intermodal containers (see below).
Thanks Paul. But I do not deserve it. I’ve rarely been this wrong in my life.
Oh, I got some of it right. I identified the freight movement, I could put an overall tonnage quantity on it, and I could reasonably determine the truckers’ charges. But I let a prejudice get in my way. And I held on to that prejudice.
After starting work in rail marketing I quickly came to regard boxcars as obsolete garbage. I didn’t want anything to do with them. They were inevitably slow and unreliable transportation vehicles. The freight carried inside boxcars is often damaged. And when boxcars are used in the traditional way that evaluation is accurate. It’s got nothing to do with the quality of management. Traditional boxcar movement is inherently slow and unreliable. That cannot be fixed. In 180 years of railroading no one in the world has fig
Is it possible to haul chicken from east to west, and then beef from west to east either the same equipment. This way it would be loaded in both directions.
Also could they install rollers on the floor of the boxcars and trailers, and make the largest pallets that will fit, so you can just have a few guys push several pallets from one to another? Airlines done the same thing with their cargo containers when putting them in the aircraft.
Shouldn’t be too hard to arrange backhauls. Beef could come to the northeast, the cars could deadhead down to NC (where MUCH pork is produced), then head back west. Or, beef could move east or southeast to Florida, go north to GA for frozen chicken, then head back west. Beef could go west to California, load produce and come back east.
I remember watching a Modern Marvel program that dealt with the beef industry, done in the 90s, one of the features that caught my eye was that the featured processing plant had started shipping over half of the beef sectioned and in boxes, instead of the traditional “side of beef”…although they were shipping those also, vacuum shrink wrapped.
If that trend continued, then this is a perfect fit.
“ARX utilizes specialized refrigerated railcars and a patented loading system to reduce loading time, secure loads during transit, and provide optimum temperature control when shipping either fresh or frozen products.”
Meat has never completely went away from the railroad. The fresh meat business is what was lost. Frozen meat was, and is, still moving in car load lots. Ever since I’ve worked on the railroad, I’ve seen car loads of frozen meat on a regular basis. It’s by no means in train load lots like it used to be, but there has been some.
If this company can bring even more back, more power to them. I’m for anything that increases rail traffic.
Boxed meat has all but replaced sides of meat. Most grocery stores get their meat pre-cut, if not prepackaged ready for sale. The days of a grocery store or meat market getting sides of beef or pork and cutting meat on site are all but gone.
In a related note, the RI had speed restrictions for trains handling TOFC loads of hanging meat going through turnouts and certain curves. I know of at least one derailment that was attributed to hanging meat that began to swing back and forth while going through some reverse curves in the late 1960s. Back when they still had good, fast track.
Meat never entirely left the railroads. It overwhelmingly left the railroads, but a few carloads of frozen product continued to be shipped by rail. American Refrigerated Express is an effort to grow rail market share. I think they’ve got very good prospects for success. I like their business model.
Virtually all meat today is shipped as boxed meat. It’s in boxes and inside plastic bags. It doesn’t bleed all over the floor as the hanging carcasses did in the past. They’ll have to keep the cars’ interiors cleaned out (it is human food) but that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Backhauls can be anything, they don’t have to be perishable products that use the refrigeration system on the car. They can go back with tires, outboard motors, Barbie Dolls, anything. And they can mix in a car. They don’t need a full carload of any one thing. They can load a truckload of this with a truckload of that to fill a car. It’s a wonderment I tell you, a wonderment.
Ideally they roll west with a load of fresh pork from JBS Swift at Marshalltown, IA to northern California, then be loaded with California produce for Chicago, then be returned to Marshalltown empty to do it all over again. Of course, the cars would be kept appropriately clean during their journey.
But ideals are just that. If they came east with a load of imported whatever from Asia that would work too.