CONTAINER lines and railways have taken a new approach to counter congestion by metering trains leaving ports to match containers inland to available terminals, warehouses, truck and chassis capacity, reports IHS Media.
Ocean container volume surges have overwhelmed inland intermodal networks and rail ramps in Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City and the Ohio Valley.
The situation has become dire enough where Union Pacific Railroad (UP) suspended international service to Chicago for one week in July.
BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), and CSX Transportation have all restricted the number of containers taken to or from Chicago.
Referred to as metering, the action is defined as: 'regulating the flow of traffic to a destination terminal under stress or congestion due to many factors such as international chassis availability,'
Said UP: 'In theory, inflows into the rail network would be in sync with outflows from the constrained destination terminal, [although] in practice this is not always or fully the case.'
'We have seen stability in loaded containers stacked at the destination terminal, and loads on railcars outside of ramp have dropped to zero, so metering is helping,' said UP.
BNSF's rail metering programme also matches IPI flow to how many containers can be covered by trucks and chassis in Chicago and Memphis.
'Our preference would be not to meter traffic at all, and we will continue to gradually increase the amount of volume we are transporting from Los Angeles-Long Beach to Chicago and Memphis over the next few weeks to give the rail partners of the supply chain an opportunity to get caught up,' said BNSF.
TRAC Intermodal chief operations officer Val Noel declared there has been more coordination with the western US railways in the last two months.
'Everyone had the right intention of trying to move the cargo in a timely fashion to satisfy the customer,' Mr Noel said.
'But unfortunately, the volume just overwhelmed the supply chain on the rail side, the warehouse side, the truck side, and the chassis side. The supply chain just couldn't keep up with it. And as a result, we get caught behind the eight ball,' he said.
Said CSX: 'The customer's ability to manage the timing, flow, and volume of containers across the global supply chain and its ability to coordinate these flows with sufficient chassis, truck drayage, warehouse, and off-site container storage facilities at inland destinations directly affects freight flows out of CSX yards.'
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Ocean container volume surges have overwhelmed inland intermodal networks and rail ramps in Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City and the Ohio Valley.
The situation has become dire enough where Union Pacific Railroad (UP) suspended international service to Chicago for one week in July.
BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), and CSX Transportation have all restricted the number of containers taken to or from Chicago.
Referred to as metering, the action is defined as: 'regulating the flow of traffic to a destination terminal under stress or congestion due to many factors such as international chassis availability,'
Said UP: 'In theory, inflows into the rail network would be in sync with outflows from the constrained destination terminal, [although] in practice this is not always or fully the case.'
'We have seen stability in loaded containers stacked at the destination terminal, and loads on railcars outside of ramp have dropped to zero, so metering is helping,' said UP.
BNSF's rail metering programme also matches IPI flow to how many containers can be covered by trucks and chassis in Chicago and Memphis.
'Our preference would be not to meter traffic at all, and we will continue to gradually increase the amount of volume we are transporting from Los Angeles-Long Beach to Chicago and Memphis over the next few weeks to give the rail partners of the supply chain an opportunity to get caught up,' said BNSF.
TRAC Intermodal chief operations officer Val Noel declared there has been more coordination with the western US railways in the last two months.
'Everyone had the right intention of trying to move the cargo in a timely fashion to satisfy the customer,' Mr Noel said.
'But unfortunately, the volume just overwhelmed the supply chain on the rail side, the warehouse side, the truck side, and the chassis side. The supply chain just couldn't keep up with it. And as a result, we get caught behind the eight ball,' he said.
Said CSX: 'The customer's ability to manage the timing, flow, and volume of containers across the global supply chain and its ability to coordinate these flows with sufficient chassis, truck drayage, warehouse, and off-site container storage facilities at inland destinations directly affects freight flows out of CSX yards.'
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