LOS ANGELES — Union Pacific will resume international container shipments to Chicago from the West Coast at the end of its current seven-day suspension of such service, CEO Lance Fritz told Reuters on Thursday.
“We’re starting to see containers clear, so I anticipate in the seven-day period … we should get back down to a reasonable kind of a normal backlog of stack containers,” Fritz told the news service.
Union Pacific began the seven-day halt on shipments to its Global IV intermodal facility on Sunday, citing a shortage of chassis and drayage capacity that had clogged the facility with containers [see “Union Pacific suspends inbound international container shipments …,” Trains News Wire, July 14, 2021].
As recently as Thursday morning, on the railroad’s quarterly earnings call, Kenny Rocker, Union Pacific’s executive vice president of marketing and sales, would not committee to the resumption of service at the end of the seven-day suspension, saying the effort was only in “early stages” [see “Union Pacific reports record financial results,” News Wire, July 22, 2021].
BNSF Railway, facing its own capacity issues, began limiting container moves from the West Coast earlier this week. On Thursday, the chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, Martin Oberman, wrote the CEOs of all seven Class I railroads asking for information on the container congestion to assess whether STB action is needed [see “STB chairman wades into intermodal terminal congestion issues,” News Wire, July 22, 2021].
I interpreted “paving over” to mean more space to store containers stacked on the ground. I also don’t know how permanent that change is.
I’m curious: what can the STB do about lack of chassis, drivers, or the huge volume hitting the ports (as evidenced by the historic backlog of ships waiting record times to offload)? To put it another way, is a historically large number of containers coming through the ports, or is it the congestion that is causing the delays? Or both…
The Washington Post had an article this week noting that Global 3 in Rochelle, IL is back open for Union Pacific. It also said, somewhat awkwardly, that BNSF had “paved over two tracks” at its massive logisitics park in Elwood, Illinois. Does anyone know what this means operationally? And why do that?
For better or worse, I think UP single-handedly torpedoed any rail mergers for the next ten years over the last month. Multiple major derailments, record profits, and an embargo.
WOW that ought to inspire confidence to shippers that they hope to return to a reasonable kind of normal backlog.
What is considered a normal backlog?