CHICAGO – Railroading’s intricacies require shippers to get involved in the industry’s nitty-gritty details. A half-hour crash course on Railroading 101 is going to leave someone more confused than confident. It takes commitment to grasp, and predict, the vulnerabilities of railroad logistics. This is why shippers often employ individuals in rail logistics, fleet management, or supply chain roles.
It’s a detailed business and demands an attentive person to ensure railcars move from origin to destination. A lot of shippers are proficient in speaking about railroad operations and are just as capable of recommending a solution as someone in the field. Railcar tracing platforms and third-party software support people in these roles by providing insight into a railcar’s whereabouts. These tools help create a soft landing for new hires entering the world of railroad logistics and allow them to understand a railcar’s whereabouts, pinpoint challenges, and work with the right folks to mitigate delays.
But in reality, railcars really should be making shippers’ lives easier. It takes 40 truck drivers to move the same volume as 10 railcars. That’s 40 opportunities for an unforeseen setback or delay. Or as it was recently described to me: “A railcar doesn’t have a personality of 100 truck drivers.”
There’s truth to that. Rail allows you to move more volume with less resources, implying that railcars should be easier to manage. And in many instances, this is true. It would be unlikely to convert thousands of carloads of coal to the highway, just as it would be impractical to replace every auto rack with a highway car hauler. Railroading is more fuel efficient and Class I railroads’ networks are superior to highways in many shippers’ supply-chain processes.
But the stewards of the industry should always be identifying ways to make the process easier for customers. Serving shippers effectively lifts confidence in a railroad’s ability to move railcars and aligns railroads and customers with shared goals of moving more carloads efficiently and consistently. People and technology are the centerpiece of this process.
It’s my firm belief railroads will continue to bring on more workers and improve service. This will reinforce shippers’ confidence and allow railroads to link better service with new technology, giving customers more valuable insight into logistics. Projects like RailPulse — the coalition of companies working to develop railcar telematics systems — will help streamline analytical insights and railcar tracking, reducing the manual and relatively labor-intensive processes used today. This will drive more efficiencies, not only for railroads, but for the industry’s closest partners, its customers.
In a world infatuated with technology and the desire to have instantaneous answers, it’s not only railroading’s moral obligation to its customers to provide the best service, but it’s an opportunity to outshine its transportation peers and make rail shippers’ lives easier.
— Chase Gunnoe works in marketing & sales for the freight rail industry and is the author of Carload Considerations, a monthly Trains News Wire commentary series. It discusses the freight rail industry, commodities, and economic trends. Its views are the opinion of its author with no particular emphasis on a specific railroad or shipper.
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