ot: shipping something by rail?

I've always heard that shipping by rail was the cheapest way. Anyone here use a train to deliver freight?
Thanks
i_r_machinist

I've only had one experience with rail shipment, and it wasn't real good. Trane Co of La Crosse, WI shipped us a large chiller via rail rather than truck. The car got lost in a yard in Chicago and it took about 8 weeks for them to locate it. I'm sure this was a rare occurrence, but a pain in the butt for us nonetheless. I can't remember the difference in shipping cost offhand, but IIRC it wasn't any really big difference. From what I see on trains going thru this area, it would appear that bulk commodity items are the area where rail has a major cost advantage.

We did prep and load a big truck crane onto a flat car one time for shipment from here to the Wash, DC area. The owner, a steel erector, didn't want to remove the house and counterweights to get it down to pieces suitable for multiple truck shipping. On that job we found the railroad has some very extensive requirements for securing a load to a flat car. I'm sure they paid us substantially more to load and secure it than they paid the railroad for hauling it. I don't know whether they saved any money overall, or not.

100 years ago, shipping by rail was easy, cheap, and available almost everywhere at the retail level. Not anymore.
None of the train stations around here are set up for individual shipments anymore, and they dont have any way of accepting shipments from small companies or individuals.

As mentioned, they are oriented towards bulk shipment, entire train cars being the minimum, and mostly in the tens and hundreds of cars.

Truck transport has replaced rail as the spokes of the hub and spoke system.

I imagine if you have multiple cars worth to ship, it might be cheaper to some places, but certainly not all- the margins that independent truckers operate at these days make machine shops that bill at $50 an hour look profitable.

I use freight brokers to book independent owner/operators, when I have partial or full truckloads, and even with today's high fuel prices, still get pretty good deals, especially when compared to common carrier rates, which can be really high if you dont ship often.

For instance, a couple of years ago I shipped a large load, basically a 40' semi flatbed worth, to Pasadena, not real heavy but bulky, 520 feet of fence, plus my job box. Used a freight broker to get an owner operator to my place, where I loaded the 40' flatbed, flew down and unloaded myself. Return shipping, by Yellow Freight, for the 4' JobBox alone was almost 3/4 what the 40' load cost going down. For an individual machine, especially a bigger one, if you can get a flatbed to come by, load yourself and be assured it will not be transferred to another truck, but taken straight to its destination, freight brokers and independent owner operators are not only the safest, but usually the cheapest, too. You have to work around their schedule- they come when they are empty, not when you call em- but I have been shipping stuff this way for years, with never a problem.

As an example of the extent to which trucks have taken over, a grocery chain with about 230 stores has its headquarters and central distribution about a mile from my house as the crow flies. They've got 1.5 million sq ft of warehouse, and are currently adding another 1.2 million sq ft.

When they originally built the site around 1980, they put in a rail spur and space to park 4 boxcars inside the building in addition to a string of truck docks so long I've never even bothered to count them.

There's not been a railcar in the building in the last 20 years. They use the space for parking maintenance vehicles since it's at ground level and below the floor level in that area of the warehouse. The spur is still in place because Norfolk Southern made some deal with them where N-S maintains the spur and uses it to park track maintenance equipment when they're working on tracks in the vicinity.

According to a friend who works there, they average 140 incoming tractor-trailer loads of groceries per day, 5 days a week. A lot of freight, and none of it arriving by rail.

I remember when I was in high school in the late 60's, most anyone who built a plant of much size put in a rail spur as a part of the initial construction. Today, there's one scrapyard that ships out gondola loads of scrap regularly, an electric power plant that gets coal shipments regularly, a paper mill that gets wood chips by rail on a daily basis, and a manufacturer of PVC pipe and fittings that gets most of their pellets in by rail. Past that, I can't think of any other business in a 30 mile radius that still has an active rail spur. Everything comes and goes by truck.

What a pity for the industry that built this country.
Thanks
i_r_

i_r_machinist said:

What a pity for the industry that built this country.

Click to expand...

IIRC there are 2 industries exempt from the sherman anti-trust act.

1. Insurance
2. Railroads

Look where they are at now.

Well, the Insurance Industry is enormously profitable, and accounts for something like ten percent of the entire economy.

Railroads have been periodically stripped of all that free land we gave them- for a long time, the single largest developer in California was Catellus, which was the real estate divisions of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads.

The last time they merged, it was a $5 Billion dollar deal.

Plenty of money has been made off railroads in the last 30 years- just not all of it from shipping freight.

Railroads were basically given hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres, back in the day, and those 500 acre parcels in the middle of every major city, that used to be freight switching yards, are worth hundreds of billions in aggregate nowadays.
Plenty of railroad investors made money.

Of course, actually moving freight is still quite a big business, something like $40 Billion a year, last figures I can find.

The market has just changed, and now its mile long coal trains, instead of ten car trains full of Sears and Roebucks deliveries.

a while back I had several truck loads of a haz mat material that had to go from here to Texas, the buyer was under the impression that I could ship via rail, but of course I could not, but he claimed that it would of been half the cost. One box car can carry almost trailer loads in weight, but if you don't have your own siding I don't think it is practical . There is a local rail road in this area that does specialize in small customers, quarries, paper mills, scrap yards, feed plants but I bet it would still be a major project to arrange for a box car on a one time basis. I do allot of work for a company that looks out onto their tracks and all summer long I see tank car after tank car labeled "hot Asphalt" and today there were dozens of high sided gondolas filled with construction debris , my understanding is that it is demolition debris from NYC on its way to the Seneca Falls land fill about 40 miles from here.

Railroads like to run unit trains.
All grain, coal, containers, tofc, etc

Probably the easiest way would be intermodal container, but you would need an intermodal facility somewhat near you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by i_r_machinist
What a pity for the industry that built this country.

IIRC there are 2 industries exempt from the sherman anti-trust act.

1. Insurance
2. Railroads

Look where they are at now.

Click to expand...

I couldn't find any linkable statistics but every Trains Magazine I have read seems to show that we are moving more freight per year than ever before. It is just the system has changed from one that was heavily boxcar and shortline based to now Intermodal Class I based rail service. It makes a lot of sense too as each seldom used shortline costs a ton of money to maintain where as the truckers don't need to pay to maintain the roads that the truck drives on for the final 60 or so miles on its journey.

Furthermore from everything I have read it seems like the Railroads are emerging faster from this recession than most industries. If you need a vote of confidence Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in 2009 bought up the country's second largest railroad Burlington Northern SantaFe! Generally speaking Buffett has been real good at picking winners to say the least.

Railroad freight

I have used the Piggyback type railroad system before and had very good luck.
They drop off trailer at your location, you load and lock it, call them and
they pick it up and put it on a train, and haul it to your detination.
They then deliver it to be unloaded by you, or your receiver.