New German device could greatly enhance truck to train freight…
A couple of years ago when diesel prices soared so high — I don’t know, $5 per gallon and more — there was much talk about shipping freight more efficiently using the railroads. In particular, there was talk of bringing the old tracks in places such as Salinas, Ca. back to life and shipping produce by rail.
At the time I was out of my usual trade but I am back in it now, hauling produce (and a lot of other types of freight) out of places such as Salinas as a truck driver.
Haven’t seen any trains on those old spur lines that run through the packing houses yet. That’s probably because the price of diesel came down a bit. (There is a unit train that runs produce between the southern San Joaquin Valley in California and New York state.)
But now I read about a new system developed in Germany that could revolutionize the business of hauling truck freight on the railroads, and, to be clear, I am talking all types of freight.
(I’ll quickly add here that putting truck trailers on the railroads in the United States has certainly been around for a long time. I recall seeing them back when I was a little kid in the 1950s (piggy back). And intermodal freight is bigger than ever these days. You see train after train with not only truck trailers but intermodal containers that can easily be transferred from ships to trucks to trains without disturbing the freight.)
There’s a new system or device developed in Germany. It’s called the CargoBeamer. Basically tractor-trailer rigs drop their trailers in a line next to the train cars on platforms that, once the tractors are gone, slide onto the train cars. It is said that once the tractors are out of the way, all those trailers can be slid onto a 36-car train in about 15 minutes. It takes hours to load normal intermodal freight by cranes. Now I know a 36-car train would be rather short by for U.S. standards, but you get the idea.
I read about this on the Der Spiegel (English version) website. For the article, just Google: CargoBeamer, Der Spiegel.
I don’t know what implications this has on the freight industry in the U.S., but it is interesting.
Coinciding with this I have been reading about how private truck fleets who normally haul only their own products are starting to make more efficient use of their trucks by hauling outside freight for back hauls rather than coming back home empty.
As a real life example, I have noted recently that Foster Farms, an outfit that ships one heck of a lot of processed chicken (and turkey) out of Livingston and Turlock, Ca., and Kelso, Wa., is having its drivers pick up bananas as a back haul out of Port Hueneme, Ca.
That’s ironic and curious seeing as how as a truck driver for a common carrier I haul their (Foster Farms) products from their plants and then vie for banana loads with them at the port.
What is happening is that private companies are being forced by natural economics to build in more efficiency.
Most observers feel that due primarily to geography and timely delivery demands in the U.S. conventional long-haul truck freight hauling will remain the primary mode of transport for some time to come. But there has long been the intermodal business and economics may well cause it to expand greatly even at a faster rate than it obviously has over the last many years. You only have to observe the trains with many of them being nothing but solid loads of truck trailers and/or intermodal containers to see the expansion.
There has already been somewhat of a shift in long-haul trucking towards more regionalized service.
Trucks continue to have the advantage of speed of delivery from point to point and they offer shippers a mode that is more practical for smaller quantities than are usually required for rail shipment.
Tighter federal government restrictions on drivers and continuing proposals to cut allowable driving hours per day along with escalating operation costs that have forced many smaller carriers out of business have restricted the capacity to haul freight in the trucking industry. That should be good for the carriers that exist when it comes to freight rates, using the rule of supply and demand.
(However, as anecdotal evidence to the contrary, I just heard the other day an owner-operator truck driver grumble about a backhaul, saying it only paid him enough for fuel if he was lucky — but of course that beats going back to your main haul empty and getting nothing. On the other hand it does not seem like a good business model.)
The government certainly has a strong role to play in overall transportation policy and safety rules and in some kind of support for transportation infrastructure, but the law of supply and demand and forced efficiencies due to operating costs made by the private sector seem to be the best way to solve the problem.
CORRECTION:
In an earlier version of this post I inadvertently used the word vertically, but really meant that the trailers are slid horizontally onto the train cars.
