Converting a shipping lane into Intermodal

It will be like dealing with the devil. What will you do when one of your containers gets loaded to northern California? Look for quality owner operators to grow your company, set the standards high.

 

He's saying what happens when someone screws up and puts the container on the wrong train? Or it's winter and the rails are all delayed? If the rails were viable, your customer would've not even talked to you.
I think it's better to expand using quality owner operators. Set high hiring standards but pay well to get the quality drivers. Hire new srivers via referal from your current ones. Worst case is you sub out some runs to a quality third party carrier.
Again your customer likes you and you impressed them enough to get a contract. Do you really want a third party carrier showing up with who knows what kind of equipment/ professionalism?

 

How? Trains run on tracks, yet the UPRR and BNSF "lose" or "misplace" hundreds of boxcars, tanks and flatcars per year. Few years back, I took a container from Denver to Dallas that got loaded on the wrong train. 25 yrs ago, a paper mill in Oregon ship 10 boxcars of news roll to Miami, only 9 made it, 1 spent a month in Denver before they finally decided to route it to it's destination. Dispatchers screw up and ship a train to the wrong location, or a container gets loaded on the wrong train because of a typo.

 

The rail isn't as reliable as trucks.

It's a giant circus, at least that's what I noticed in my year of hauling containers.

Cheaper isn't always better.

 

I heard that a container being ship from California to Oregon, has to run thru Texas, get switch, go to Chicago, get switch and then to Oregon.

 

Overall exposure to service failures would increase 100% there a lot of moving parts to converting a lane to intermodal. Ultimately it will come down to the rail terminals for the two points, you can have everything in place and end up with constant delays at the terminals, from our experience there is a lack of security in the sense of performance because it will be out of your hands and you will be held responsible for any rail related delays.

 

Denver to Houston is 5 days by train, it routes through N. Platte and then Omaha. Denver to L.A. is 3 days, via Cheyenne and the switch yard in Green River. The only fast train is the Z-train, Chicago to L.A., it never deviates never get's humped, always stays the same number of cars.

 

Besides the delays the others have mentioned another concern is how hard the rails are on freight. If the product is delicate or not secured in the can VERY well you can bet some, if not all, will show some damage. Between the guy pulling the can from the parking spot to the train, the guy putting the can on the train, the train ride itself, the guy taking the can off the train and the guy putting it in it's parking spot at the destination yard, you have a lot of folks who couldn't give a #### about YOUR freight handling it.

I once saw a Marten intermodal trailer that had gotten it's kingpin stuck on the railcar 5th wheel. They got it unjammed, but only by rocking the trailer back and forth real hard. Then when it swung back the 5th wheel pushed up into the bottom of the trailer completely severing both air lines and the electrical line, bending 3 cross members, one so bad it actually snapped, and puncturing the floor so bad that when they transloaded it they had to LIFT pallets over the damage. They drug it from trackside to the trailer repair area by the front gate and let it set there for 2 days without telling Marten, then let me spend 2 hours running all over the yard looking for it after asking multiple times if they knew what was up with it....

So ya, sometimes the trains aren't reliable.... but sometimes neither are the folks in the cranes/yard trucks.