Intermodal in Chicagoland

Welcome to the club and soon you will find navigating in and around the rails in Chicago a breeze.

The only CSXs I go to are Bedford Park and 59th St, both are relatively straight shots to get to, meaning no worthwhile shortcuts.

 

Purchase an Air-gauge and check your tires in your pretrip. You'll decrease the chances of having a blow out alot.

Also welcome to Intermodal. I run those rails as listed in your OP.. but I primarily go to CN Harvey, CSX, NS,BNSF Elwood, Intergrated Harvey here and there.. and yard center. All operate just about the same. Routes? not really. And those chassis... all crap!

 

As far as pretrips go I would say always look at the FMCSA first, the closer to expiration it is the more thorough you need to be. I dont mean to say if the thing just got inspected that you don't need to pretrip it, but if it's a month away from expiration go over the #### thing with a fine tooth comb. You should at the very least be thumping your tires, checking your lights and doing your fan down. The FMCSA check can be done from the cab as well so if you're in search of an empty try to get one that is on a chassis that has recently been inspected.

 

I'd rather hook up to a less than stellar box on a good chassis than a brand new box on a less than stellar chassis.

 

Thanks for bringing up the FMSCA inspection on chassis.

If ya pull a chassis that has an expired inspection and you got pulled over or pulled in to a scale and given an inspection, you'll be nailed personally a $127 ticket for an expired fmsca inspection on a chassis. Yep. Happened to me once, tried to get safety to pay it lol. I fully knew well it was my fault, was just in a rush and forgot to check it... but safety response was "yeah really? might aswell pay you for coming to work too!" lol. #######! lol.

 

I rarely check the air pressure in the tires on the chassis. It's ultra rare to see anyone whip out a tire pressure gauge in the rail yard and check the pressure on the chassis tires. I do it on my tractor but on a chassis I'm usually hooked to 6 or more a day...I've been hooked up to 14 before in one day. It gets a kick test to see if it's flat or not. I'm a company driver for JB Hunt and they have been putting the auto inflation system on there chassis which helps a lot in this regard. Although the whole low air warning sound they give off when a tire/s is low on air is rather annoying. When I check the tires I'm checking to see if they are flat or not and if they aren't flat if they are damaged and need replaced. If not I take it down the road. As far as the rest of the pretrip goes you check everything and you report every bit of damage as well. The left mudflap bracket bar is bent out 2 inches you report that is damaged, the right front corner post is bent by 3 inches you report that as damaged, container buckled somewhat because of the way the packer loaded or unloaded it you report the side paneling is bent in. If they tell you "we only write up damage if it's six inches or more" you tell them it's more then 6 inches even if it's 3 inches and if the registration box is missing along with the chassis registration or if the registration is just missing you get a chassis swap period.