new freight its alliance with New Century will generate will come from existing customers. “We have focused the entire sales effort so far on current customers,” he said. “We’re looking for additional density and pickups — if we can get three shipments instead of two, that’s a good thing.”
It’s tough to fatten lanes when freight is thin. “Shipment sizes are smaller, freight density is lighter across the board; it’s just the economy we live in,” Kramer said. “We’re trying to gain a little extra line of haul.”
Milan, which had close to $200 million in revenue in 2008, operates in the Midwest from Ohio to Illinois and a part of Wisconsin and in the South from Mississippi to North Carolina. Its relationship with New Century began last year, when the Westampton, N. J.-based company began sending it freight.
New Century typically handles heavier LTL freight outbound and backhauls truckload freight to customers in the Northeast. The company doesn’t have the cross-dock terminal network typical of LTL carriers; instead, it delivers its freight directly.
Many of its shippers, however, had smaller LTL shipments headed to the South and Midwest — freight New Century couldn’t handle on its own. “They were saying no to some of the smaller shipments because they didn’t have an outlet and they can’t run a traditional pedal network for deliveries with their system,” Kramer said.
Milan became that outlet in the South and Midwest. “Instead of just picking up t wo or three larger shipments, they were picking up one or two large shipments and filling in with smaller LTL freight we would deliver for them,” Kramer said.
Now Milan is returning the favor, funneling LTL freight to New Century’s main facility in Westampton, N. J., from terminals in Columbus, Ohio, and Charlotte, N.C.
Inbound freight volumes from New Century have been growing consistently, Kramer said. He expects outbound volumes to rise. “Customers told us in no uncertain terms that greater opportunity exists for us if we would handle a larger geography,” he said. JOC
INCHES THROUGH CHICAGO
nearly an hour and three lasted 20 minutes or more. That is down a bit from 11 incidents in May and 14 in April, and down sharply from the 50 blockages lasting at least 10 minutes on EJ&E tracks in March, the first month under CN’s ownership.
Critics say CN’s reports understate the impact, and cite complaints from motorists that long, slow-moving trains also tie up area roads. Those are not counted as blockages if the trains are moving.
A group calling itself the TRAC Coalition, for The Regional Answer to Canadian National, asked the STB to require reporting of any traffic backups of at least 10 minutes from the train operations at grade crossings. That would be a more stringent reporting standard, and involve the railroad monitoring roadside traffic.
If CN cannot collect such information itself, “then it should be required by the board to fund an independent data collection mechanism that has that capability,” TRAC said in a June 26 letter to the STB.
The reports also are a window into train industry operations. A 43-minute blockage in West Chicago on June 6 happened because a traffic controller incorrectly timed when train equipment should connect.
At Joliet on June 25, a road was blocked for 13 minutes when both locomotives pulling a train from the nearby railyard simply shut down, CN said. They had to be restarted, shoved back into the yard and repaired.
Sometimes the delays underscore a problem railroads often warn about. A 10-minute road blockage at Plainfield, Ill., on June 9 came as 46 loaded cars and 34 empties waited for trespassers to get out of the way and then for air to recover for the air brakes. JOC
Contact William B. Cassidy at wcassidy@joc.com.
CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAY is taking a cautious track toward its goal of speeding up rail service around the congested Chicago Freight hub.
In its fourth monthly report since absorbing Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway in January, CN said it is moving slowly to add traffic to the Chicago-area short line it took over early this year, as the recession gives the railroad more time to work out operating changes on its new property.
CN told regulators at the Surface Transportation Board that only on June 30 did it add a second daily train in each direction on its EJ&E tracks. It diverted the first t wo trains in March from CN’s normal mid-city route onto EJ&E, shortly after it took over the small railroad.
Since then, CN has focused on cutting the times its trains block motorists at road crossings, to help tamp down resentment in those towns to its EJ&E purchase.
Karen B. Phillips, CN’s Washington, D.C.-based vice president for North American government affairs, told the STB CN train counts on the short line “remain below pre-transaction levels due to lower traffic volumes.”
Eventually, CN wants to shift more trains out of its congested downtown tracks onto EJ&E, speeding its cross-country trains around the continent’s largest rail hub city and easing midtown rail congestion. It’s a strategy shippers and competing railroads are watching closely as the Canadian railroad tries to go it alone in breaking through a Windy City logjam that has become a feature in moving traffic bet ween the east and west ends of North America.
For June, CN reported 10 instances when trains on EJ&E tracks blocked motorists for at least 10 minutes. Two of those lasted
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