OK, sue me. I’m not a poet.
The last couple of weeks the BNSF lines through my part of the world are crazy busy hauling grain. That seems odd to me, as I thought that grain was more likely to be stored locally when prices were down. Anyone else seeing an uptick in grain rolling by?
Fall is the start of the harvest season. Who knows the current status of the storage facilities? Who knows who is buying and selling grain for Export? Who knows who the ultimate consumers of exported grain are? A number of questions that need answers!
Some of the grain moving could’ve been contracted for delivery now. There’s always some grain moving. Otherwise ADM, Cargill and others (not to mention the ethanol plants, most of which don’t receive corn by rail) would shut down. I’m not sure, but I think our grain train moves are about normal. There doesn’t appear to be more grain trains running at the moment.
All the bean fields I’ve seen have been harvested. They seemed to go after those first. Some are just beginning to harvest their corn, others are about done. I’ve noticed some elevators are starting to store corn on the ground, but not as much as usual. One place had a big pile tarped over already. It could be due to having the corn harvest still in progress. There’s one elevator facility that will temporarily have a pile that is higher than the surrounding trees. It used to load grain trains, but now they (part of a large co-op) truck it to another load-out elevator about 10 miles away.
Jeff
[quote user=“jeffhergert”]
Some of the grain moving could’ve been contracted for delivery now. There’s always some grain moving. Otherwise ADM, Cargill and others (not to mention the ethanol plants, most of which don’t receive corn by rail) would shut down. I’m not sure, but I think our grain train moves are about normal. There doesn’t appear to be more grain trains running at the moment.
All the bean fields I’ve seen have been harvested. They seemed to go after those first. Some are just beginning to harvest their corn, others are about done. I’ve noticed some elevators are starting to store corn on the ground, but not as much as usual. One place had a big pile tarped over already. It could be due to having the corn
All else being equal, you always bring in your beans first. 3-4 hard-freeze/thaw days after the hulls dry will see them start to split and dump the beans on the ground. Great for the varmits, not so for your profits. There can be mitigating circumstances (equipment availablity, storage capacity,taking advantage of dry weather to get your corn out of a field with drainage problems, etc.), but corn can usually stand until the temperature falls below freezing on a nightly basis.
BNSF grain traffic in KS has seen a sharp uptick and is projected to be well above average for quite sometime. This is one reason all condrs off-in-force have been recalled and the carrier is in process of hiring new condr classes at several stations. One night last wk, in a span of several hours, five grain trains were seen passing across Wichita on the Ark City Sub. To maintain the grain car fleet, the Newton rip trk is going to become a destination for repairing grain cars which need work. Last summer this work was relocated to facilities elsewhere but returning bk to the heart of grain country.
Although there is no way to know the destination of Murphy’s train, we are getting close to the point at which the transloading facilities on the upper Mississippi River become ice bound for the winter.
While individual sightings and anecdotal reports are interesting, it is difficult to accurately extrapolate to a state-wide (or system-wide) perspective:
All of the Class1s submit a weekly service/loadings report to the STB. Here is the link:
https://www.stb.gov/stb/railserviceissues/rail_service_reports.html
Looking at BNSF grain loadings for Kansas, third week of November, 2017 compared to 2016, it is clear that grain business is way down:
November 2017: 1,122
November 2016: 1,641
I don’t know where Murphy Siding resides, but individual road data for grain loadings in his (and every) state can be found at the link above.