Rail decisions could hurt onion, melon shippers
By Andy Nelson
(May 31) Onions delivered by rail could reach their destinations late and in
poor condition unless the government reverses a recent move by the nation’s
big railroads, transportation and onion industry members say.
Beginning May 18, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co., Fort Worth,
Texas; Union Pacific Railroad Co., Omaha, Neb., and three other Class I
railroads began phasing out their intermodal common carrier trailer service,
which many onion shippers rely on to deliver their product.
The railroads intend to phase out all 55,000 trailers in free-running
service by mid-2006.
In an attempt to put the brakes on the railroads’ plan, the onion industry
has added its support to a petition filed with the Surface Transportation
Board, Washington, D.C. The petition seeks to prevent the railroads from
canceling common carrier trailer service.
The petition, filed by WTL Rail Corp., Palos Heights, Ill., includes
supporting statements by Wayne Minninger, executive vice president of the
National Onion Association, Greeley, Colo., and Stephen Baca, president of
San Andreas Fast Forwarding Inc., Tucson, Ariz., a carrier that serves onion
grower-shippers.
The end of common carrier trailer service will mean the end of a
transportation option vital to many industries, including onions, said
Richard Lombardo, WTL’s president.
“There are businesses that are trailer-oriented and always will be
trailer-oriented, and onions is one of them,” Lombardo said. “The nature of
onions is that the harvest is spread out throughout the country, and you can
’t really use controlled private fleets for that.”
In common carrier trailer service, railroads own a fleet of trailers
available for use on short-term notice. The alternative to common service,
Lombardo said, is contract service, where rates and load sizes are fixed for
long periods of time in advance with private intermodal providers that own
their own trailers.
Large companies like United Parcel Service can afford to make long-term
contracts with private providers, Lombardo said.
Smaller companies in more volatile businesses like fresh produce cannot.
With the cancellation of trailer service, onion shippers will be forced to
ship product in rail containers, which adds two or three days to the typical
five-day trailer service trip, San Andreas’s Baca said.
