# Where do freight trains load and unload? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2019, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240 "2019-09-15T01:13:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/41 "2019-09-23T13:24:15Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > It’s not simply, or even “quicker”; it’s flexible as opposed to having the rigid timetables of a rail network. > > The haulage company I used to work for specialised in shipping pallet loads of perishables (like yoghurt) between manufacturer and wholesaler. Next day was the normal delivery time. They sent several trailers full to Scotland (\>300 miles and seven hours drive) every night. They experimented with rail freight containers but it simply didn’t work. > > The containers had to be loaded and then delivered by road to the rail depot, they were transhipped and hauled up to the depot in Glasgow and then by road to the company warehouse. In theory, it should have worked, but if there was a delay in loading, and this was frequent because they were still waiting for goods to arrive from elsewhere, the container would miss the train and have to go all the way by road anyway. The rail company still wanted payment for the unused space too. > > With a trailer, an hour or so’s delay didn’t really matter. Time could be made up on the road with luck, or the receiving depot would just have to wait. The experiment was abandoned after six weeks. Judging by what I’ve heard from old-timers who worked with or sued rail shipping - the rail companies just don’t care. They could set up a system like FedEx and make sure that shipments, especially whole containers, go where they have to on a schedule 99% of the time, they could set up priorities so perishables get delivered properly - but they haven’t, and don’t care to. The existing traffic is sufficient to meet their goals with minimum effort. Union rules contribute to making it difficult to enforce quality service, but the main indifference comes from management - why bother? Like the big department stores of yesteryear, why do great when you can do passable and there isn’t (so far) any competition? Reminds me of the story of Ford planning to getting out of the family sedan business because there’s more money in trucks. ---
**Author:** ![FollowMeDown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6a8cbe/32.png) [@FollowMeDown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FollowMeDown)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/42 "2019-09-23T14:00:48Z")
It’s less about union rules. Freight crews are good for 12 hours. And they’re happy to work. When I was a conductor I remember being on a coal or stone train and just sitting for hours and hours waiting for permission to move. Almost every other train is priority over ore. Intermodal being one of the highest. CSX’s Tropicana juice train is im betting the hottest train on the railroad. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/43 "2019-09-23T14:55:55Z")
There are plenty of industries out there that get their raw materials and feed stock in by rail yet are not big enough to get a trainload lot. Here is a [mixed freight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNEypCWWVYE) in Indiana with lots of tank cars and covered hoppers. Towards the end are some house cars and [coil steel cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coil_car). Coil sheet steel is used in a wide variety of products from auto fenders to refrigerators and the truckers don’t like to deliver it because it’s heavy and is dangerous if it gets loose in an accident. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52DK0zqFSe0) is a short video covering small industry switching in Florida. A few weeks ago I was stuck at an auto repair shop in Reno for nine hours. There was a [spur](https://www.google.com/maps/place/410+E+6th+St,+Reno,+NV+89512/@39.5326614,-119.8095837,138m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x809947499d0aaa57:0xadbcea6b8c4bca9e!8m2!3d39.5332999!4d-119.8092896?hl=en) right next to the garage with really battered high-side gons on it. The one furthest from the switch was full of shredded scrap steel, the one in the middle had some scrap in it, and the one closest to the switch was empty. A train going north with a couple dozen cars stopped, backed into the spur, pulled the three out and added the full car to its train. It then pushed the remaining two back onto the spur and added a third car before continuing on north. A couple hours later it went back south with the scrap gon still in tow. Some time after that a dump semi-trailer loaded with scrap and a front end loader arrived and emptied the trailer into the half-full car. I’m figuring the scrap company was renting the spur because the building it’s actually next to is owned by the Nevada Department of Corrections and probably doesn’t need any rail service. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/44 "2019-09-23T17:27:36Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > […] Thanks to union rules and management arrogance, the difficulties in dealing with smaller quantities of freight became less appealing and more flexible trucking companies were willing to jump in and solve the problems. > […] > I knew a fellow who worked for a company that made shipping software. One install job was for a major retailer with specialty stores all over the USA. The software would figure out optimal truck loads and routes, so one truck would be filled in the correct order and head out on the best route to efficiently deliver what was available in the warehouse to a sequence of stores in the continental USA. > > The railroad companies couldn’t be bothered with this sort of customer service[…] Blaming this on unions and management is… interesting. Maybe trucking companies are more flexible because trucks are more flexible. You want to deliver a partial truckload from random point A to random point B by truck? You need a truck and a guy to drive it and maybe a $50 GPS unit and few bucks for tolls depending. You want to do it by train, you need to build tracks between A and B. Is it really just management laziness that prevents railroads from building new rail lines to a bunch of retail stores, in order to deliver way less than a truckload of material to each store? ---
**Author:** ![Thin\_Ice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@Thin\_Ice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thin_Ice)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/45 "2019-09-24T00:13:57Z")
Here’s the latest vid from a central Florida railfan who explains a lot about what he shoots. [Distant Signal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWHxodQ-Jw) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/46 "2019-09-24T01:59:53Z")
Again, in a lot of places they already had the rail lines to individual places, and they chose to stop using them. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/47 "2019-09-24T04:38:15Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Is it really just management laziness that prevents railroads from building new rail lines to a bunch of retail stores, in order to deliver way less than a truckload of material to each store? There’s a certain amount of ownership inertia to blame, because so many of the critical links (through mountains, across big rivers, through tony suburbs) are pretty much at capacity and hard to expand. But the biggest factor is that, as I described upthread, railroads are inherently one-dimensional, so scattered pickup locations require the massive inefficiency **DesertDog** described of having to cut a train (which is tying up a whole rail line while it’s out doing pickups), add a car in, then remake the train and move on to the next location. Trucks, by contrast, can easily cross each others’ paths many times en route from warehouse to retailer. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/48 "2019-09-24T13:11:48Z")
Railroads are well aware of that fact and when a small industry is to be served it’s either on an industrial branch where the train making the delivery is the only one using it that day or, if it’s along side a main line, an industrial siding will be parallel to the main line so all that backing and filling to deliver one boxcar you see in the video I linked to won’t get in the way of the mainline. [Here](https://www.google.com/maps/@32.4097359,-111.1430705,17.7z?hl=en) near Tucson, the two northernmost tracks are the UP (former SP) mainline handling fifty or sixty trains a day. To serve a big Portland cement plant on the other side of the freeway, a really long siding has been added so the local can do what it needs to do without stabbing the main. When it’s done, it trundles about ten miles south to a yard in Tucson with it’s collection of cement filled covered hoppers and they will be added to the next mixed freight east or west, depending. About 90% of those fifty-odd trains are COFC with a number of solid auto-racks thrown in. East of Tucson you can add coal unit trains running between Wyoming and a big power plant in Vail. The rest are mixed freight. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240/49 "2019-10-05T19:40:23Z")
Along L.A.’ Expo transit line, you can still see where there used to be spur tracks that branched off so boxcars could be parked alongside local businesses for unloading. So a lot of the time it’s more a question of unloading a single car or two, rather than the whole train. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-do-freight-trains-load-and-unload/840240.md?page=2)