The freight rail business is booming, which can be aggravating for scrap recyclers looking for gondola cars and timely shipments. Attendees of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) Annual Convention heard comments on the state of the freight rail system from two rail companies and two scrap transportation managers.
David Garin of BNSF Railway Co., Fort Worth, Texas, says his company is concentrating on the “last mile” of freight transactions, noting that the challenge is, “How do we make that more effective?”
Garin says rail freight providers are trying to address a number of problems by increasing the average time of a freight journey from point to point (velocity). “Velocity is the key to leveraging new and existing capacity,” said Garin.
BNSF is surveying all of its customer sites to see how rail sidings can be reconfigured to avoid bottlenecks. Thus far, some 30 percent of the sites visited cause the main rail line to be blocked while car switching takes place, demonstrating the need for such surveys. Additionally, BNSF is investing in new locomotives and 66-foot gondola cars, says Garin.
Attention to gondola cars may be suffering, however, because of the increased attention to container cars used in intermodal shipping, which has become the fastest-growing segment of freight rail.
CSX Transportation, Jacksonville, Fla., has invested in some 300 new locomotives in the past three years, says Shelly Mast, that company’s vice president-customer service.
Like BNSF, the company is concentrating on “first mile/last mile” improvements, says Mast, although it is also being asked to add new sidings.
Mast says a concern of scrap shippers and CSX alike is the increasing average age of the gondola fleet. She indicated that 43 percent of CSX’s gondola fleet would be reaching the end of its anticipated 40-year life span during the next four years.
That same concern was expressed by Tom Pellington of David J. Joseph Co., Cincinnati, who also acknowledged that the scrap industry can help maximize its use of that fleet by keeping closer track of cars and by dispersing scheduled shipments more evenly throughout the month.
Phillip Bedwell of OmniSource Corp., Fort Wayne, Ind., also urged fellow scrap recyclers to be more vigilant regarding the whereabouts of gondola cars. Bedwell predicted that more scrap companies will be acquiring private fleets of gondola cars in upcoming years as a proactive way to ensure that they can remain on the rails.
The ISRI Annual Convention was held in the first week of April at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.