Shipping Goods by Rail

In the words of someone famous...fuggetaboutit.

Yes, it is possible for an individual to ship things by rail, but this is a corner of the railroad performance envelope that is sorely lacking. It would be an exercise in extreme frustration, and if you needed the goods to be at a certain place by a certain time, fuggetaboutit.

Railroads are just not very good with this type of business.

Tell the railroad that you want to have 135 cars of coal moved from the mine to the power plant twice a week, every week, you will likely get very good service. you will be needing 4 or 5 110 car unit grain trains moved after the harvest season, you will again probably get thier attention. A one time single car move, most likely from an obscure point to another obscure point, don't expect the same level of service.

Doug

I was just thinking about posting about this very idea the other day.
I would guess the railroad would have very little to do with the matter unless it is a drop and dump situation as mention above such coal or grain, where you just need their cars. I don't know of any railroads doing consumer ups/fedex style shipping, as the goverment took that over in 1917 as the Railway Express Agency.
However, what I do want to know, and the reason I was thinking about it, with railroads like NS claiming 410mpg, is it actually cheaper to ship a boxcar somewhere than a tractor trailer. Do railroads "penalize" small businesses versus large customers? IE these litle guys that ship one boxcar once a month? Are they going to charge you more to stop a train and run down your little spur to pick up one car once a month than picking up 135 cars twice a week? I'm sure they are, but is it "we don't want your business" different, like $1000 for one car, but only $100 per car if you have 100+? How are costs figured? distance travled?, Number of times needed switched? number of railroads used? Urgency? Sorry to ramble on.

As someone with a package or small shipment our way to access the efficiency of rail transportation is by buying the services of UPS, J.B. Hunt or another firm to consolidate our freight with that of others and then they buy in bulk from the railroad.

Generally speaking, railroads got out of the retail end of the shipping business in the 1960s through the 1980s. They gave away the retail margins to cut the costs that come with retail customer service. So far it has worked well for railroads and trucking firms. And, although we can come up with personal stories of occasional poor customer service, it has worked out pretty well for small businesses and individuals.

Whatever happened to those express cars that one used to see being hauled by
Amtrak passenger trains? How did that work out back then, and what caused the demise of that service?

Ed Mullan

I'd wager that in general it's a LOT cheaper to plop a loaded UPS trailer on a flatcar than to load up a boxcar with the same LCL lading.

Rusty

Ah yes - we used to have the Railway Express Agency (my Grandfather worked there for 57 years) and we used to have the railroad handle LCL (Less than Carload) shipments. I remember the local freight stopping at a station and the conductor opening a boxcar on the rear of the train and him and the brakeman schlepping boxes over to the platform.

What happened? UPS happened. FedEx happened. DHL happened. And those guys also happened to the USPS. Their door-to-door capabilities doomed the rail services, as their efficiency is dooming the USPS.

EdKing

Unseen:

I've spent the last 32 years as a rail shipper. To answer your question as to how railroads price, it's pretty much the same as in any industry. The railroad has both variable and fixed costs it must cover on each loaded (and empty) car and then applies a profit margin based on whatever the market will allow. I know this is somewhat of an over-simplification, but essentially that is how it works.

Now, for loose car shipments such as chemicals (the industry I work in), lumber and so on, a railroad's cost is going to differ from the cost incurred to move a unit train of coal or grain. Obviously, unit trains do not require a lot of individual car handling either at origin or destination or at intermediate points enroute. Thus, on a car for car basis, a single car shipment will be charged a higher rate than a car moving in unit train service.

Another factor that enters the pricing picture is risk. If the product being shipped is considered a highly hazardous TIH/PIH (toxic or poison inhalation hazard) such as chlorine or anhydrous ammonia, a premium will be tacked on to address that increased risk. Likewise, a carload of caustic soda or sulfuric acid would be assessed a premium over a carload of scrap steel.

And, perhaps one of the biggest factors determining what will be charged for a shipment is the captive nature of the shipper. Most chemical plants, for example, are served by only one railroad and, particularly for the higher risk hazmats, trucking really isn't a practical option. Where a shipper is captive, the railroad will tack on a premium simply because they can.

Now, in today's railroad market, they won't turn their noses up at a smaller single car shipper. Back prior to the recession when all of the Class 1's were capacity constrained however, they were essentially triaging their business and eliminating that which they didn't feel met the new market standard for profitability. Eliminating the lower margin business freed up capacity for shippers who were willing to pay a premium to use rail.

To get to the point of this post however, if all you will ever have to ship is one car, forget rail unless you put that one shipment into the hands of a truckload carrier such as JB Hunt or Schneider who uses rail to cover their long hauls.

Curt

quote:

Originally posted by Edward King:
Ah yes - we used to have the Railway Express Agency (my Grandfather worked there for 57 years) and we used to have the railroad handle LCL (Less than Carload) shipments. I remember the local freight stopping at a station and the conductor opening a boxcar on the rear of the train and him and the brakeman schlepping boxes over to the platform.

What happened? UPS happened. FedEx happened. DHL happened. And those guys also happened to the USPS. Their door-to-door capabilities doomed the rail services, as their efficiency is dooming the USPS.

In south central Pennsylvania, a fellow parishioner I knew used to roast a chicken on Sunday while at services.

On comimg home she packed the roasted chicken a box and took it to the local station and ship it to her mother in Altoona by Railway Express. Our little town was on a PRR branch served with a 2X daily doodlebug run. At York, the roasted chicken was put on the connecting train to Harrisburg, where in turn it was put aboard the next PRR train heading west.

The chicken started out at 1PM and got to her mother's house by 6PM. It was delivered by a Railway express messenger, who also picked up the empty roast pan and box from the previous Sunday's "chicken run" for its return trip.

She did this every Sunday for about 5 years. So it got to be a regular thing on the PRR lines involved. What may have helped was that she worked for the Railway Express Agency in York. But it does provide a window into what could be possible!

Ed Bommer



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Edited by the Webmaster to fix the quote formatting.

Public loading tracks still exist, but they are dwindling in number, and most are unattended, being either in on-line locations miles from the nearest terminal, and/or in neighborhoods where safety is a serious issue. Presuming your freight was still in or on the car by the time the railroad picked it up, it would require a lot of bracing and securement. There is nothing gentle about railroad freight service.

If you are thinking about a single shipment, you will probably have to order a car, and you might have your best luck with a regional or short line. I don't believe any railroad does LCL any more, and the car forwarders which used to load consolidated small shipments from their warehouses into boxcars are long gone in the places I ever knew of them. And posted rates? You are thinking of the regulated era. You should expect a high price quote which could change as often as the railroad can justify it. The amount of handling, both in the office and in the field, required for a single car shipment from a public loading track is going to be written into the charges. You will not ever see anything like a station agent. Probably, you'll have to make all arrangements by the railroad's web site. You have car seals, don't you? An inspection -- at your cost -- may be required by the railroad before they will pick up the car, and your bracing or other securement may not be adequate. They will let your car sit until you meet their standards and pay for another inspection. To get the inspection done, an inspector will have to come from a large terminal; you will pay for the time and mileage. And this will happen every time the car is interchanged from one railroad to another if you have a shiftable load on an open car. If your freight is damaged in transit, you will need to furnish proof that you properly secured everything. Will it be necessary to unload from a particular side of the car, and in a particular direction? That is available at extra cost.

The train or switch engine that serves your public loading track may not have time to pick up your car as soon as you release it. If could be days later before the car is picked up. Will you be shipping it to another public loading track? If so, be aware of demurrage charges. You do not have time to dilly-dally in unloading and releasing the car empty.

If you have no experience at dealing with a railroad, you could be in over your head very easily. Our esteemed Webmaster was being kind when he described it as "an exercise in extreme frustration." But it would certainly be an interesting experience.

The railroad used to give managers a boxcar to ship household goods when they were transferred from one location to another.. A friend of mine loaded his automobile in a boxcar for shipment from San Bernardino to Corwith, and the Company secured it well with chains, blocks, etc. He got a call that his automobile was at the dock in Corwith, and he went over to retrieve it. The carmen removed the blocks and chains. He got into his auto and closed the door, whereupon the mirror fell off. He started the engine, and the muffler fell off. Good luck.

Tom:

I just noticed your little postscript about facing toward 80 East Jackson St. I was in that building many times when the Santa Fe was still headquartered there. I loved that place as it just reeked of history.

Curt

If you ship a package coast to coast by UPS ground, there's a good chance it will move part of the way by rail, inside a trailer or container.

JB Hunt sometimes had loads gathered by Daycabs but not enough long haul drivers able to reach em, so they get dropped into the rail.

There was a lumber yard with a spur that received several cars a week. I think for whatever reason, their spur was full so the railroad plopped an extra load into the Team track and someone had to dig up a flat bed and forklift and spend a few days transferring the lumber.

A few days after that the railroad picked up the empty.

Regarding the gentleness of rail, I will see the occasional trailer hanging off somewhere in the car, it may have not been a good fit such as a well car but they will do it.

There were major trucking in Baltimore downtown and way back in the day you could take stuff and ship it. LCL was labor intensive. That went away.

I hauled LCL in a Reefer at times and having to deal with 10 deliveries and three different temperatures via bulkheads and two coolers as well as wrestling with the schedules it could take a week or more to get empty. Not a very fast way to make money.