Are Intermodal Loads No Touch

I work for JB Hunt as a company Driver out of there intermodal terminal in Harrisburg PA and I'm going to answer your questions based on my own experience and talking to other drivers from different companies that are strictly intermodal (Rail yard not ports).

To answer your first question yes Intermodal is no touch freight.

To answer your second question they do both load pallets and floor loads. That is really up to the customer how they want to do it.

Yes for your third question. I go to ES3 in York a lot and ES3 is a gigantic warehousing facility for groceries. In fact a lot of the places I go to our grocery warehouses. They aren't bad and it's almost always drop and hook...although the C&S grocery live unloads are a different matter.

For the forth question It depends on how fast the receiver is unloading the container. Generally not long but the occassional Dollar general loads and the C&S grocery live unloads can take a few hours.

 

Same with jb hunt driver above me, I'll share my experience with Schneider pulling can from the rail.

I haven't touch a single freight since I work here. It's pallets and floor load depending on the customer. We (schneider) don't have reefer for intermodal but we do haul dry food (general mills/nestle/Kellogg etc)
Unloading depends on the customer. It can take 15 minutes or 3 hours

 

Run, Forrest, run (I love that line)I've been out of the loop a while, but my experience was, IT'S ALL FLOOR LOADED! Maybe slip sheets, if you are lucky, but the reason they are floor loaded, is these shippers will never see their pallets again. Most of my "fingerprinting" was when I was pulling RR cans, but I got paid to stack it on pallets, AT THE DESTINATION. I hauled cigarettes, all on the floor, fertilizer in bags, 734 bags on the floor, tires, floor to ceiling, on the floor, picked up vegetables at Del Monte, slip sheets, need I go on? Once I hauled a load of Freeze pops, (not frozen) spent 3 hours putting them on pallets, I almost got done, 2 pallets worth to go, the guy comes out and says, "Wait, you brought us 18 pallets of one kind, and 2 pallets of another, we wanted just the opposite. I was devastated, he said we are going to refuse the whole load. I looked at him, said, "excuse me one minute", called my company, and they told me, tough luck, that's not our problem, you are supposed to be somewhere else loading that trailer this afternoon. The place was pissed, but there was nothing they could do.
Not too many grocery warehouses, and delivering was just as screwed up as any "normal" trucking.

 

I want to add there is some reefer intermodal out there. JB Hunt has a few reefer containers but it's like 100 out of the tens of thousands they have. I've seen there reefer containers before but October will make 2 years and I have yet to pull one. Most of the reefer containers I see in the Harrisburg rail yard actually belong to CR England since they have a contract with Hershey chocolate...I would never work for CR England because there pay is god awful. Hub Group and the containers actually owned by Norfolk Southern I don't believe any of them are reefers...at least I've never seen it.

 

I work for JB Intermodal out of Chicago and I have touched some freight. Well, I personally haven't but I have called for a Comcheck for a lumper. But that has only been a few times in my 7 years here. I have picked up a lot of freight that goes to food warehouses (I just take it to the rails) but I haven't a clue whether those are driver unloads or not.

 

I don't touch nothing for unloading besides cutting the seal. If they have a problem it's not mine. Unload it because your free 2 hours has started.

 

It is depend on situation.

 

99.5%, probably the only part of trucking where this is true. The .5% are the rarities, or the occasional flatdeck special loads where you have to untarp and fold up the tarp and secure everything. Can't recall the last intermodal load that I fingerprinted. We have two non-intermodal loads that we do for customers which are driver unload, but they are billed accordingly and take it into consideration.

depends on the shipper/customer. Sometimes they are floor loads, sometimes palletized, sometimes slip sheets. Grain loads will almost always be floor loads.

occasionally, prefer to do a Sam's/Walmart, they make an point to get you in/out in under 2 hrs to avoid detention. UNFI is the absolute worst, typically 3 to 6 hrs. King Soopers (Kroger), Safeway aren't bad, 1.5 to 3 hrs. We do a lot of Kings loads on the weekends though.

As long as the customer wants to take, first two hours are included in the rate, after that, $65/hr to $95/hr depending on the customer/broker/forwarder/situation. However, if the customer demands that I assist with the unload, then the free time is terminated, and we begin billing them by the hour from the minute I checked in, of course, this is after Dispatch has cleared it with the broker, unless it's preplanned that way. Amazing the number of times I've gone someplace, been told it's a driver assist, dispatch calls broker, broker calls receiver, and suddenly I'm free to kick back in my truck.

 

You are wrong if you ever unload a container. You never touch freight from one. That's not right.