UP is currently in the process of completing a transload facility inside it’s Global 4 (G4) Logistics Park in Joliet, IL. Completion is scheduled for Q4 21. The facility will create a backhaul of Midwestern Grains loaded into ISO containers for export to the West Coast. This is a great idea as trains can be filled out at point of origin instead of creating a work event down the road. Maybe UP is finally waking up, but time will tell…
News article here
Photo Credit UP
Don’t know that I follow their logic. Are storage silo’s going to be constructed to facilitate the transloading? Is the farmer going to deal with the transloading facility or will they continue to deal with their ‘local elevator’ and then the elevator deals with the transload facility. Or is the idea to bring in a Unit Train from a local elevator and then transload the contents of the Unit Train into ocean boxes.
Article mentions 50K boxes a year or 136 per day. Is that 20 foot or 40 foot international boxes?
“Regional producers and processors will be able to transport their product by truck to Global IV, where it will be transloaded into intermodal marine containers for shipment by rail to West Coast ports, then loaded onto ocean carriers and shipped to overseas markets.”
Which begs the question - why aren’t Regional producers and processors able to load international containers on their own and deliver them to the intermodal terminal for furtherance.
A 40’ Container has a combined chassis and box tare weight in a range of 15K-15.3K lbs. A hopper trailer for hauling grain has a tare weight range of 7.5K-10K lbs. The farmer can haul more net grain to the terminal at a cheaper rate. Cutting the amount of trips as well.
Maersk, MSC or whoever owns the box. Gets higher utilization due to the box not straying away from the terminal and being held captive at a farmer/co-ops silo. This is a win-win for everyone, and I would not be surprised to see this replicated throughout the rest of the industry.
So it seems UP has made an annoucement some of us have been waiting for. UP will finally open a intermodal ramp at West Colton albeit a small one to begin with. If the traffic base grows I imagine UP will push classification to Roseville and convert West Colton into an IM ramp. Maybe UP is starting to wake up or somebody is prodding them to get into growing traffic… Either way these annoucements are great news first G4 transload. Now West Colton. Article here.
Back in December of 2020 UP started shipping iron ore for export to the Port of Long Beach again. The ore is being shipped in trains of about 150-160 cars for export to China. Loads orginate in Southern Utah not sure what mine though. I’m curirous as too how they are shipping iron ore in aluminum hoppers. I wonder if they had their interiors coated to prevent cross corrosion of the aluminum. Any insight into this would be appreciated.
FWIW, our aluminum sulphur cars aren’t lined either (the steel ones were).
Not sure that I have ever seen a more inefficient manner being used to load a bulk commodity into ocean going vessels.
Grain has already been moving in containers. I always thought it was some kind of specialty grain product, the train lists only have so much room for names of the loads. It doesn’t seem the most efficient way to move a bulk commodity.
OTOH, smaller grain facilities that can’t load unit trains or even has rail service might be able to use containers.
Jeff
Yes those are specialty grain products a fast growing market segment. Which is the target and smaller volume shippers as you noted, though also receivers of low volume. The nice thing about the G4 transload it kills two birds with one stone. The farmer can haul more net grain with his lighter tare hopper bottom. Companies like Maersk, MSC, APL, etc. get faster turn-around, and gets a backhaul. A win-win for everyone involved.
Perhaps they were concerned that if they didn’t find a revenue back-haul, someone was likely to suggest they start hauling hides?
And not as if the transloading technology to do it better doesn’t clearly exist in this context, either
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhwvXIOkoBY
There must be some reason why that method of using dump trucks and large shallow dump is in use.
I don’t think there’s a major galvanic-corrosion issue between aluminum and iron ore. You may be thinking of thermite, which is chemical rather than electrochemical, and requires a considerable endotherm to get started unless there is a large surface area between aluminum and iron oxide…
The volume is not there for them to invest in ship loaders. Plus this contract is not long term.
Have been watching some farming videos - they are using augers to transload seed and fertilizer from storage bins to trucks and from trucks to the seeding equipment.
While I am certain that particular equipment is inadequate to handle something with the weight of iron ore - certainly - the best and brightest can devise and build a more efficient and high volume pieces of equipment than what this video showed for ship loading. The equipment being used to tranload from the rail cars to the storage piles are much more efficient.
How much tonnage is being loaded on the ships? How long are the ships in port to facilitate loading? Ships cost their owners money - waiting or sailing.
It’s coming from Iron Mountain, near Cedar, Utah. It’s been an on again, off again project, so I can see why they have not built ore dedicated loading facilities yet.
Several grain elevators in Northern Il have been shipping soybeans to Japan in 20 ft containers for years. Was a big uptick when Global 3 was up and running. They had been taking them to Chicago before it opened and took them to Chicago after it “closed”
No the farmer isn’t going to deal with anyone but an elevator which functions as a bonded warehouse. The farmer might ship substandard product and there is no remedy since it only discovered in China or other destination. The bonded warehouse , as the term implies is bonded to insure that it actually has the goods of the named quality. Thus
Thanks Mike. I should’ve known the ore is coming from the Iron Mountain District. Alot of high grade magnetite in the area.
[quote user=“SD60MAC9500”]
Ship loader is a rather nebulous term. This is, y’ know, the people’s Republik of Kalifornia. Where a truck or piece of construction equipment built prior to 2009 does not exist and cannot be used. The answer, though is not to buy a fleet of Terex 60 ton haul trucks at huge expense when ordinary highway equipment will do the job and be marketable if the operation goes belly up. Even at twice as namy trips this would be cheaper. Those haul trucks are useless in applications such as copper minng where the hot number is the Lieberr 305 ton capacity model. Just think, it can haul 5 of those Tonka toys to the dump. Very little market for them if this doesn’t work. A conveyor would be great but the cranes are already there and needed to put equipment in the holds to move material to trim the ship and level it . So the dump box is likely the best option there. It is not the pinnacle of efficiency but it works. I would not have wasted the money on those haul trucks when twice as many Macks at half the cost would do at least as good a job.
BaltACD
SD60MAC9500
Back in December of 2020 UP started shipping iron ore for export to the Port of Long Beach again. The ore is being shipped in trains of about 150-160 cars for export to China. Loads orginate in Southern Utah not sure what mine though. I’m curirous as too how they are shipping iron ore in aluminum hoppers. I wonder if they had their interiors coated to prevent cross corrosion of the aluminum. Any insight into this would be appreciated.