Local Intermodal questions (Chicago area but other areas will work)

its a tougher gig I personally wouldn't care for. Before I was a driver I worked for an intermodal rail forwarding company. I rode along with one of the guys in town that pulled many of our local rail cans, just to see what it was like out there in the field. Finding good order equipment can be a pain. Dealing with the rail yards when something goes wrong can be a joke (hey there BNSF!). Pulling long boxes around town sucks. Sometimes shippers and receivers take forever since they're either loading or unloading a full trailer, so hopefully you're paid by the hour. The guy I rode with was an owner-op who ran his own daycab under a brokers rail authority, so he took a percentage of the revenue plus FSC. Basically worked a piecemeal job with no benefits. Time lost was food out of his mouth. Not too appealing aside from the fact he was basically self employed.

 

I agree the BNSF yard is a tough one to find your container and when you find it it will be stripped of almost all of its lights. Also BNSF takes awhile to get in and out of. This is the yard over by the Chicago Fire soccer stadium.

 

I've been running intermodal as a company driver out of Denver for 15 yrs, used to run regularly down to Baytown Port of Houston few times a year, occasionally over to Omaha, KC or SLC. It really depends on the City as to how much of a PITA the ramps are. UPRR is just a pain no matter what City, they change their rules like they change their underwear, and neither one makes any sense. The BNSF, at least in Denver and Omaha are good people, quick easy to find cans in/out quickly unless there's a problem with billing or the computers. Repairs are quick/easy as BNSf, find the repair truck tell him what you need and it's done, unless it's tires or brakes, then, well then sometimes it can take an act of god and several hours. The UPRR, well, they are just a PITA for any repairs, two hours to have a tire replaced, god only knows how many weeks for bad brakes, they have their own interpretation as to what an OOS item is. Carrying a bag of lights for swaps depends on the ramps, Denver and most other UPRR ramps are now installing lights on their equipment with rivets. If you get caught popping one out to replace it (when broken/burned out) it's a one month suspension from the ramp, second offence is a 1 yr suspension from the ramp. The BNSF doesn't really care, although their mechanics are much better at replacing lights than the UP is.

Probably the biggest issues are tires, most are old, junk and rotted. We recently ran across a recap that the casing was originally made in 1995, recapped in 2000 and again in 2006, it won't be capped again as there wasn't enough left of the inner sidewall to put in the trash. Policies regarding replacing tires is amusing at best, dangerous at worst. Did a load this past summer, 53' van of forklifts, 3 stops, two in Denver on in SLC. They had to replace 3 of the tires before I left the ramp, I tried to get them to replace a fourth but they said it wasn't bad enough. It blew on the way back.

Pay can vary, I'm paid on a split of hourly and percentage, anything within 100 air miles of Denver is hourly, beyond that is percentage as well as a percentage of detention pay. Few years back the BNSF had a derailment that closed the main line from Denver to Omaha for 3 days. They pulled all the hot loads off the Z train and paid the dray companies to truck them to Omaha, since it was mostly UPS trailers, they were in excellent shape. Some of us even lucked out and got backhaul cans as well. In situations like that, they will usually pay pretty much whatever the companies want to charge. Since it took all 5 of our O/O's and both of our company sleepers to help, we got $2.00 per mile plus FSC for pulling trailers or bobtail.

 

When I was running containers in and out of the Chicago area, I regularly visited 15 of the 18 active inter-modal yards within "Chicago". There are more in the area, but 18 in the immediate area. What makes the operation tough is that the ******* yards are actually IN Chicago and in some of the highest traffic areas. It can take hours to travel small distances and some of the train dispatch schedules require that a container is in the yard just before rush hour. Some of the better yards start planning their loading sequence in the evening and continue until AM rush. One big issue in Chicago is that you're operating within the #1 largest rail hub in the US. I've been scheduled to drop one, pick up another and then swap it for a return load many times where that schedule is IMPOSSIBLE. Your inbound container could be stuck 8 miles from the terminal and stay there for two days because a train in Kansas blew a turbocharger causing a traffic jam all the way to Los Angeles! This sounds dramatic but I've actually witnessed it while driving from Cali to Chicago. When the logjam finally moves, you'll have trains 3 wide and 3 deep coming into the yard and it can take all week to clear it! This means that it's possible for your next three loads to be a REAL joy as the one you've dropped can't be loaded until it's unit is decoupled and staged which is hampered by your incoming load being stuck on the side of the Stevenson 2 miles away and the shippers become BACKED UP worse than a $10 toilet with freight they cannot ship and your receivers light your phones on fire because they're jammed up with YOUR equipment and wondering when their load is coming. Another pain is that many containers are offloaded onto a chassis so that they can be transported across town and loaded onto ANOTHER TRAIN. Chicago IS the E-W terminus for the 4 largest railroads in the country and even though they could transfer some cars interline or from UP to CSX, the lines don't line up in and orderly fashion and are already jammed with traffic. Another factor is that containers are typically 2 high and loaded onto a series of "Married" rail cars or in trucker lingo "B" Trained. Either 3 or 5 cars usually share axle trucks....so you would have to pass the whole unit, containers and all. IMHO...BNSF equipment is the best, followed by UP,NS and the "lease" equipment lags behind. CSX equipment is usually LIKELY to have some kind of issue with the lights or air. Even the best equipment is not always loaded onto the chassis properly but this can usually be remedied with a 3 pound hammer and a cheater bar. YES, you may feel the need to adjust how a container is sitting on its wheels with a little brute force at 3AM in freezing cold temps. As for the pin locking mechanism, its best to carry zip ties to secure them in place so your container doesn't fly off in the middle of the highway after hitting a hard bump. One final point in about the tires...These chassis have some CRAZy tire spec and since many of them come from ASIA, chassis have these narrow,funky plastic tires made in China with auto inflator systems. I've had to sit for an hour before waiting for a handful of tires to inflate enough to catch the bead on the rim. The only advantage is that a few of the yards have a small area where you can sleep if that is necessary but I would take Gary,IN any night over trying to sleep in Back O' The Yards or Englewood! 63rd and Indiana is not a nice place to get into or out of and the same could be said for *thinks* 49th street and Ashland Ave...on the other hand, I have no issue with sleeping bobtail outside CSX Bedford Park,IL in the industrial area.

 

Anyone work out of NY/NJ ports or rail yards?