Rail options have improved for produce shippers, but the reach of trains remains limited, according to logistics experts.
“Temperature control units have become more reliable. It’s much better than 10 or 20 years ago - less expensive, more consistent, more dependable,” said Chuck Clowdis, managing director of trade and transportation with Englewood, Colo.-based data gathering and analysis firm IHS Markit.
Rail has advantages over trucking, said Clowdis, a former trucker.
“You don’t have to buy a tractor or hire a team of drivers to take a load to Chicago. All you got to do is get it to the ramp and it gets to Chicago in 12 to 18 hours longer (than by truck),” he said.
That’s one of the disadvantages of shipping produce by train, said Victoria Kresge, vice president of dedicated services and logistics at NationaLease, a truck leasing firm in Downers Grove, Ill.
“Rail has provided an alternative for the transportation of hardy produce, reducing shipping rates and fuel surcharges on certain produce. The disadvantage to shipping produce via rail is time,” she said. “Rail loads have longer transit times then trucks will.”
“If you have things that are (time-sensitive), you send it by truck,” Clowdis said. “A lot of people will send it by truck to be safe. The reefer guys are a cut above. They’re running a very specialized piece of equipment.”
With the implementation of mandatory electronic logs for all trucks built after 2000 starting next year, trains could narrow the time gap, said Marshall Kipp, CEO of Advanced Transportation Services in Visalia, Calif.
“Where the rail goes, with the e-log book, if you don’t have a team on the truck, the rail can deliver it as fast as a single driver,” he said.
Kipp said trucks still offer “door-to-door” freight savings and other advantages.
“If there’s a temperature issue, on trucks you can do something about it,” Kipp said.
Los Angeles-based grower-shipper The Giumarra Cos. tapped into rail for the first time with a watermelon shipment in 2014, said Roger Saldivar, division manager of the company’s Giumarra Trucking branch.
“We are continuing to explore this route as it makes sense,” he said.
Still, rail is a relatively minor participant in the produce business, said Kenny Lund, vice president of La Canada Flintridge, Calif.-based Allen Lund Co.
“It’s increased some, with what they’ve done with Railex, but we’ve seen many players get out of handling it by rail,” Lund said.
Shipping by rail is difficult because of the number of times the product is handled, Lund said.
“The more you touch produce, the more you have problems,” he said.
Rail’s other disadvantage is infrastructure, Clowdis said.
“You don’t have as many to choose from,” he said, listing Kansas City Southern, which runs up and down the middle of the U.S.; Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX Transportation, which ply the East Coast and connect markets east of the Mississippi River; and BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, which run different east-west routes.
Canada’s Canadian National and Canadian Pacific run east-west-routes and dip into the U.S., as well, Clowdis noted.
But trains don’t go everywhere, Kipp said.
“Where the rail goes, it has always taken the business from the trucks, but the rail is not effective all over the United States. It’s effective to Chicago and New Jersey, but it’s short of traffic lanes,” he said. “You can’t rail to St. Louis. You can rail to Chicago and truck to St. Louis from there, but by the time you do that, you’ve lost the effectiveness of rail.”
Increased oil production in recent years diverted some potential rail business away from agriculture and into the energy sector, which reduced shippers’ options to use trains, said Jon Samson, executive director of the Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference of American Trucking Associations in Arlington, Va.
“I know from a trucking standpoint, if rail was playing in that (produce) sector, it would be miniscule compared to what they’re doing on the energy side,” he said.
Even though oil production has slowed, train availability remains relatively limited, Samson said.
“It seems like rail still has some capacity concerns,” he said.
Trucks carry 70 percent of all tonnage, with air and rail accounting for the rest, Samson said.
That percentage likely will increase in the coming years, he said.
“It’s just easier to put another truck on the road,” he said.
