Modern times / modern equipment

[Russ Bellinis]

I know that the LAJ does not handle any well cars or intermodal equipment. I also never saw any intermodal equipment behind PHL power when I worked in the area. In the case of the PHL the only intermodal equipment I ever saw was BNSF or UP pulling containers out of the harbor or hauling some into the harbor. The latest thing for the last 20 years or so here in the Long Beach and LA Harbors has been to load and off load from trains directly to the ships and from the ships directly to the trains in the larger shipping terminals. The UP also has a large intermodal yard near the old SP Delores Yard. The idea is to get as many of the trucks hauling "cans" off of the freeways by transhipping directly from ships to trains or using very short trucking runs from the ships to the trains. Unfortunately for BNSF, their nearest intermodal yard is Hobart in Los Angeles about 20 miles from the harbor. Their may be well cars taken to shippers by LAJ or PHL, but I don't think that is the case. PHL is less than 5 miles from any container terminal in the either harbor, so a container needing to go to a location in PHL territory, will be picked up by a truck and delivered, never by train. In the case of LAJ, it is less than a mile from BNSF's Hobart Yard or UP's Washington Street Yard, so again containers needing to go to a customer in LAJ territory will be picked up or delivered by truck. Trains can deliver 100 double stack cars with 200 containers across country for much less expense than trucks, but a single switch engine with crew delivering one or two well cars is not economically feasible. In addition, a container in a well car cannot be unloaded without a crane to pull the container out of the car and put it on a chassis to be backed by a truck into a loading dock. It is much less expensive to load the container onto a chassis at the shipping terminal and deliver it by a truck to the local industry than it is to try to do anything locally by train.

Is there any place in the country where a well car would be delivered to an industry for unloading rather than to some rail yard where the container is transferred to a truck & chassis?