ATLANTA — Norfolk Southern has introduced an incentive program to improve container movement in and out of international intermodal facilities in Chicago and Kansas City, Mo.
The “Dual Mission Reward Program” offers truck carriers and steamship lines a $200 incentive every time a drayage driver both delivers and departs with a shipping container, completing what the railroad calls a dual mission. It is being tested at Chicago’s Landers Intermodal Facility, NS’s largest terminal handling international freight, and the Kansas City Intermodal Facility. The railroad will pay the reward when a trucking company or steamship line completes dual missions at least half time time over a set period.
The company says the idea grew out of brainstorming with customers and truckers on how to help address pandemic-related bottlenecks in the transportation supply chain, and says the pilot program can both increase efficiency and improve sustainability.
“Trucks leaving the terminal that were formerly empty now become loaded, productive miles for the truckers,” D’Andrae Larry, group vice president of international marketing at Norfolk Southern, said in a press release. “The amount of truck time saved by gaining an immediate load versus leaving the terminal to find a load, the emissions reduction, the employee productivity gains are all wins for sustainability in the marketplace.”
The railroad estimates that at Landers, if truckers both pick up and deliver at least 50% of the time, the program has the potential to eliminate approximately 46,000 truck trips, reduce fuel use by 546,000 gallons, and avoid over 5,600 metric tons of carbon emissions. Currently, truckers who deliver an international container to an NS facility leave empty about 85% time because of challenges in coordinating between customers in the U.S. and abroad.
The current container situation has put intermodal operations in a spotlight. What was considered “the way things are done” is being questioned and is bringing the inefficiencies to light. Look for changes to start occurring when someone see a profit in doing things differently.
As others asked earlier, “why aren’t they already doing this?” Is it the draconian check-in/check-out procedures set up by the railroads?
One-way trips are very inefficient. Why weren’t the trucking/draying companies begging for this? Or were they?
Noted in the article was that problems would be had coordinating loads both ways when it comes to shippers. Having at one time drove for a drayage company there’s more to this than most know. would pick up a chassis in one city and drive to another for the container. Or pick up a container, drop it off and bobtail back for another container. Add to the fact that as far as international containers more loads are coming in than going out. Will be interesting to see how well this idea works.
I would think the trucking companies would have been doing this anyway, especially if they have to wait to get into the terminal. Why wait twice?
Now, if they could only run their damn trains on time……
If the trucker has to sit in a queue for several hours before even getting into the yard gates, he will have idled away half of that bonus in wasted fuel. The bonus might help at NS intermodal yards, but the queues at BNSF and UP yards are miles long and $200 will be a pittance.
I am guessing that either the bonus will go up across the board or they will do demand pricing to spread the queues out. Set bonuses by a time window. For example 8PM-3AM gets a higher bonus than a truck that shows up at 7AM like all the others and queue up.
“The railroad estimates that at Landers, if truckers both pick up and deliver at least 50% of the time, the program has the potential to eliminate approximately 46,000 truck trips, reduce fuel use by 546,000 gallons, and avoid over 5,600 metric tons of carbon emissions.” It took a worldwide bottleneck to figure this out? Should have been doing this for decades.
Precision Scheduled . . . . . . . Trucking?
Good one!