BNSF added a Sunday morning eastbound departure from its Hobart terminal in Los Angeles and a Monday morning westbound departure from North Baltimore, Ohio.
BNSF began directly serving CSX’s former intermodal sorting hub in October 2018 after reaching a haulage agreement with CSX to handle the trains east of Chicago. The container-only service initially ran five days per week.
The North Baltimore terminal was the center of CSX’s hub-and-spoke intermodal system, which transferred containers between trains as a way to build density to and from smaller markets.
CSX scuttled the hub-and-spoke system in 2017 under CEO E. Hunter Harrison and has since sought to develop local traffic at the terminal on its former Baltimore & Ohio main line. BNSF sees the terminal as a way for its intermodal customers to reach Detroit; Columbus and Toledo, Ohio; Pittsburgh; and Louisville, Ky.
BNSF is likely to add more West Coast origins and destinations to the Northwest Ohio service next year, Tom Williams, group vice president of consumer products, said at the Intermodal Association of North America’s Intermodal Expo in Long Beach, Calif., earlier this month.
Retail and e-commerce continue to drive growth in BNSF’s domestic intermodal volumes, Williams says.
Intermodal has a role to play in moving e-commerce inventory between distribution centers. “We’re feeling like e-commerce will feed growth over time,” he says.
BNSF’s reservation system is giving it better visibility into incoming intermodal loads, which now include a “need by” date that allows BNSF to smooth peaks and valleys in daily volumes. About half of intermodal volume is using the system, Williams says.
BNSF is currently testing its first fully autonomous crane at its Logistics Park Kansas City.
While autonomous cranes have been in use at dockside container terminals at ports where container ships are unloaded and loaded, it’s the first time a domestic intermodal terminal has used an autonomous straddle crane to handle boxes.
John Rice, again with an excellent point! And Charles Landey is spot on. It is best to look at history, make a few adjustments, and move forward. As modernization occurs and technology improved, use them to grow, not to regress.
Note that the BNSF, the innovator here, is not publicly owned as is CSX. CSX is gasping for business now that nearly all business is down.
@Gerald McFarlane: Allow me to rephrase. Not haulage rights, track rights.
Is it feasible for one of the eastern roads to do something similar with UP in Rochelle?
To everyone saying that CSX gave up on North Baltimore…North Baltimore was never an actual origin/destination point for CSX Intermodal, it was only ever used as a either a block swapping site or container swapping site.
John RIce, that’s not how a haulage agreement works, CSX still has to provide the crews and extra power if needed as well as fuel for the westbounds out of North Baltimore. Northwest Ohio is a short haul for both NS and CSX, so it makes more sense to do haulage agreements for terminals like Toledo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and North Baltimore than run a separate train, intermodal only works in those lanes that either go beyond or originate west of Chicago, local haulage is OTR domain at this point in time.
You see CSX Intermodal….this is how its done. Sales people making sales calls and creating business opportunities. Simple enough? One would assume so.
I would be thinking bigger if I was BNSF and buy the whole lot of CSX outright. Not sure if CSX or NS would be better fit but its time someone truly thinks transcontinental. It will only happen with a privately owned railroad and or a private equity because shareholder companies that can’t think past the days stock price is a big reason you got vanishing freight
ATSF shouldn’t have given up so easily on its 1980’s extension to Remington, Indiana (purchase of TP+W).
So those customers that CSX gave the shaft and told them to dray out of Chicago, simply called BNSF and asked them to take it the rest of the way to Ohio. It may have saved CSX money, but they gave it up to BNSF.
Look, if CSX just wants to be a haulage agreements railroad, then stop messing around and sign off your network deals with the rest of the Class 1’s. Then you won’t have to screw around with those messy transfers, switching and delivery arrangements.
Just own the rail and ROW and auction off haulage rights and time slots to everyone else. No union entanglements. You will work just like the internet, providing the pipes to the yards and let contracted short lines deal with the last mile.
Correction: EHH gave up on North Baltimore in his usual dim-witted fashion. I doubt his fellow officers were pleased, but chose to shut up if they wanted their bonuses and golden parachutes.
Interesting, CSX gave up on North Baltimore, but BNSF sees potential. I hope they are successful