I work in the retail lumber industry. A rule of thumb, when we’re buying lumber or plywood, is that 2-1/2 semi’s are about equal to 1 train car, as far as the amount of wood they haul. Is that an accurate comparison? Does that ratio hold true for other commodities?
WAL… hmm. No. And I tell you why I think so.
Down by Harpers Ferry is a lumber yard, we used to move lumber of all sorts to and from that yard across the old bridge (That new one finished yet?!) and the best we could do was about roughly 48,000 pounds on a 48’ great dane flatbed taking most if not all of the deck.
A train passed by earlier today and they had some Opera House Lumber Cars, it would take me at least three of those great dane flatbeds to cart all of that stuff away from that one car alone.
You could think about weight, cube volume and density and railroad cars of today are pretty good at all of that.
Now the older steam era 40’ boxcars etc are pretty durn close to what today’s trucks can run.
If yer buying lumber for a big box store like Home Depot or Lowes etc… keep in mind that by the time they get it all off the rail car and sorted among the dedicated vendor trucks destined to deliver the product to your store it is going to arrive as a lashed down mass of different types of wood except for Gypsum Board or similar that is all one load.
The Maryland Midland railroad fed a 84 Lumber Yard/store with a siding that could hold up to three lumber cars or so and I think once a week they work hard to unload the stuff. There was also a team track years ago where flatbeds would shuttle in and out after transloading the lumber.
My Experience was with a Lowes distribution with a third party trucking company out of Hagerstown and it was a pretty good deal… a bit of gravy work, a few straps here and there and a tarp for the really hideously expensive import wood. Although we were surrounded by railroad tracks I dont have any idea if they unloaded off a railcar.
From various sources, I get a fairly standard size for a centerbeam bulkhead flat car as 73’ long x 9.5’ wide x 11’ high. That comes to 7685 cubic feet. Assuming that the 48’ truck flat takes 8’ wide x 8’ high thats 3072 cubic feet.
Looks like 2.5 truck load per car would be in the ball park.
the Great Dane trucks part I understand. What is an Opera House Lumber Car?
I work for a small chain of lumberyards. Our siding is on the soon to be removed, former Milwaukee Road line. It hasn’t been used for 20+ years, so we have our merchandise unloaded offsite by a wholesale dealer. They then truck it the 1.1 miles to us.[:)]
Opera Centerbeam Example:
Jay, not all of that width is usable, due to the center partition. You’re usually talking palletized or prepackaged lumber with these things, so we’ve probably only got eight feet of width, and 72 feet of (eight-foot) lengths.
Thanks. I was baffled until I read the reference to opera windows.