Here in Southern Oregon and Northern California there is an increasing Woodchip car shortage. Talking with the various short lines and mill owners this problem is now spinning out of control. Union Pacific has firmly stated it is out of the wood chip hauling business. They are getting rid of their entire woodchip car fleet. (Mostly made up of old SP Woodchip cars.) This leaves the mills with that other shipping method, yes the trucker. With the mills increasing their output for the season the chips are building up. Not one railcar builder has offered up any new cars for this type of movement. (7,000 cube) Most of the so called used cars a just that, on the way to the old aged fleet home. At the other class one camp BNSF the answer is "We don't have any!, and if we had any extra we would be using them!" Another couple of great examples of class 1's not looking out for the little guy or their own customers.
Unreal...Railroads forcing more business to the roads. just what we need. I live in Nor Cal and have followed woodchip trucks many times. The dust is all over the place. I thought RR's were suppose to serve....yea, right...serve their own interests..... Ahhh to go back to the days when RR's MADE cars to serve the business. Grrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!
The bottom line is that UP has figured out there is no money in moving chips. UP is apparently still willing to move woodchips, but the shipper has to supply their own cars at their own expense, as UP will not supply such cars for them. UP has their entire fleet of chip racks up for sale, and some companies (Georgia-Pacific and Lane Forest Products as two examples) have purchased chip racks from UP. Those chip racks that UP does not sell to the shippers will be scrapped. There is an interesting thread on Trainorders right now about the shipper-owned ex-UP chip racks. One shortline example...the McCloud Railway got into the chip hauling business in the fall of 1993. Each carload of chips delivered to the interchange brought the railroad less than half the revenue of a lumber load moved the same distance. More than one McCloud employee told me that for what the MCR got for moving the chips they might as well tell the shipper to bo build their own d#@n railroad. Pacific RailNews ran an interesting article two or so decades ago, titled Down to the Sea in Chips. It detailed an effort the UP made to improved the utilization and efficiency of its chip car fleet. The basic method involved assembing a unit train of woodchips, with some lumber and raw log traffic, that would originate somewhere in Idaho and move west, collecting chip loads as it went. By the time this train reached Portland it was a monster. There was a counterpart eastbound train to redistribute empties going east. The service did not last long- the amount of switching involved en route doomed the train and the service, and on more than one occassion UP found itself paying train crews for both a mainline job and a yard job due to the amount of switching involved and the subsequent violation of the maximum amount of switching a road crew could do under their contracts. Part of the article profiled the various classes of chip racks on UP's roster. One of the classes started out as standard boxcars...when they got replaced by larger boxcars UP cut windows into the cars and made them into outfit cars. When the outfit cars became uninhabitable UP plated over the windows and doors and cut the roofs off, thus producing acceptable chip racks. A UP official is quoted in the article as saying that those cars were the only chip racks the railroad owned that even came close to earning a return on investment. Jeff Moore Elko, NV
I find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't buy up their remaining cars, especially if UP is still willing to move the loads. UP's monster chip train sounds like an idea that would have worked but for the rules. It's too bad they can't create exceptions to turn profitability. I mean, I would think on that type of train you hire train crew willing to do the mixed work and assign them a special class of rules. Too bad they can't be that flexible. It's also funny, Woodchip cars are some of the last fallen flag remnents I've seen. I've never seen a BNSF woodchip car, but I've seen plenty of BN, NP, and GN cars
The deal that UP is pushing, the woodchip cars are up for sale by bid. There a a few stirings, they must run only on UP, no short lines and no mileage or per diem. This just about leaves it to the big shippers to buy these cars. The short lines are on their own and there are not many cars that are usable out there. Building new chip cars are in the works...at $85,000 each! They won't hit the rail till 2007.
