RailKevin wrote:bwparker1 wrote:Pasta = Light Weight = Truck for outbound shipments
Those pasta loads are not light. I own and operate a truck (booo! ) and last March I picked up a load of pasta at the Barilla plant in Ames, IA and delivered it to the Barilla plant in Avon. There were about 2,000 cases on 33 pallets, and the weight was 43,000 lbs. As a comparison, the max load most trucks can carry is 45,000 lbs.
I just checked the internet load board and discovered that these shipments continue even now. Also, I found outbound loads to places like NYC, NJ, and CT. Barilla will have to ship by truck to places that cannot receive trains (or that cannot handle too much pasta at once).
I found this information interesting...
Check out this link, it confirms what I suspected about Maximum weights for Boxcars:
http://www.alaskarails.org/fp/Boxcars.html
The Maximum load on certain box cars can approach either 263,000 lbs. or 286,000 lbs. While pasta weighing 43,000 is heavy, that weight equals 6.65 truckloads for 1 box car that can handle the maximum load of 286,000 lbs. The problem is physical space. While I didn't see your truck, my guess is that it was pretty full, if not totally full.
I am in no way a logistics expert, but one rule of thumb appears to be that the heavier the commodity in relation to its volume, the likelihood of rail being cost effective increases. In the case of pasta, a boxcar of pasta is the same as a truckload of pasta, in that you can fit about the same amount in either container. Therefore, trucks would seem to have the obvious advantages when shipping finished loads of pasta. That was the basis for my original statement of:
Pasta = Light Weight = Truck
Brooks