Improving Rail Shipping Costs and Convenience with Railcar Mover Vehicles
For manufacturers and distributors that ship and receive goods by rail, dealing with inconsistent freight schedules and costs is a fact of life. It takes multiple railroad companies and switching operations to get a railcar to its destination, and each touch point introduces the potential for schedule delays, added switching and spotting costs, and demurrage fees (which we’ll explain later). These challenges aren’t limited to any single type of freight or travel distance, which motivates all customers who utilize rail freight shipping to seek out ways to reduce their risk of schedule and cost variations. Incidentally, most variations occur at the very beginning and end of a railcar’s journey, and this suggests that customers should consider bringing as many of a railcar’s endpoint operations inhouse as possible so that they can directly control when, where, and how their railcars interface with external railroad companies. In fact, manufacturers and distributors of all sizes are increasingly turning to Railcar Movers to do exactly this.
Railcar movers are a unique category of material handling vehicles that can move and spot railcars without the need of the main railroad company’s locomotive. In essence, railcar movers are combo road-rail vehicles that can drive freely across the ground, mount onto rail tracks, connect to railcars, move these cars around a customer’s yard or dock spurs as needed, and then dismount the tracks once complete. In this way, railcar movers offer customers infinitely greater discretion and flexibility in managing their daily rail activities. Without railcar movers, customers must rely on external railroad companies (“railroads” from here) to position their railcars, which is often the main source of schedule and cost variation. Railroads prefer to haul, not to stop and spot, as they say. To allow railroads to keep hauling, customers can lease or buy railcar movers and take on endpoint actions themselves, as we’ll demonstrate in the next section.
Specific Application Examples of Railcar Movers
Virtually all industries in our economy ship by rail, and each one can utilize railcar movers to improve the interactions between railroads and customers. Agricultural & grain, chemical, building & construction products, fuel & coal, durable goods, heavy industrial, and military freight types are among the most common rail traffic. With these industries and more in mind, here are a handful of specific examples where railcar movers pay dividends:
- Avoiding Demurrage Fees – whenever a railroad cannot either pick up its railcars or release a customer’s railcars back to them, the railroad will charge demurrage fees to penalize customers for this extra time and handling. Railcar movers are the best way to avoid demurrage fees by both allowing customers to work through cars and release them back to the railroad as fast as possible, as well as by making space and moving in cars waiting for private spotting.
- Managing Constructive Placement – when a railroad cannot place a railcar in the customer’s actual placement location, it will spot the railcar in the next most accessible location, which is referred to as constructive placement. A railcar might be constructively placed outside of a customer’s rail gate, on a nearby siding track, or at the railroad’s yard. To later move the railcar to the actual placement spot desired, customers are charged a fee and scheduled for a later date. Alternatively, a customer can use a railcar mover to perform this pull themselves at no additional cost.
- Controlling Spotting Details – especially for customers with large fleets and expansive yards to manage, railcar movers allow customers to control specific spotting details themselves without relying on the accuracy, attention, or availability of railroad crews. Most often, we see this play out in the form of customers swapping out more desirable cars for different purposes, moving cars between dock and load positions as their production needs change, and more accurately spotting cars in relationship to bulk material filling and discharging equipment in less time.
- Sharing Costs with Joint Spur Users – many customers located in industrial parks or logistics centers share private spur access with other businesses, which often complicates schedules and introduces spotting errors. In these scenarios, many customers will use railcar movers to handle their needs and provide valuable support to their fellow tenants, sharing costs and solving problems for the whole group’s benefit.
- Ensuring Consistency – if for no other reason, companies utilize railcar movers to gain complete control over their rail shipping processes. With railcar movers, customers can significantly decrease their reliance on railroad switching crews while simultaneously insulating themselves against railroad add-service fees to come. And while it goes without saying, higher consistency in all railcar actions also directly promotes higher safety, adding yet another way that internalizing rail operations with railcar movers is a good thing.
Railcar Mover’s Core Features & Benefits
Many customers have the initial impression that railcar movers are extremely complex and require specialized training akin to that of a train engineer. While railcar movers do require specialized training, it’s closer to standard warehouse forklift training than customers might realize. When customers rent, lease, or buy railcar movers, they’re provided with ample training to get them started, and they can count on being able to safely put their mover to work that same day. To further show how railcar movers are safe, powerful, even comfortable pieces of equipment that operators can trust, here are their standard features and benefits:
- High Load Capacity – able to handle groups of full and empty cars with ease, railcar movers are generally available with between 29,000 lbs and 63,000 lbs of tractive effort (across single-coupled and double-coupled configurations).
- Combo Road & Rail Mobility – railcar movers are equipped with both on-road and on-track wheels, which gives operators maximum flexibility in splitting and spotting cars individually as well as quickly switching between different spurs. Railcar movers are typically equipped with large, all-terrain road tires specifically designed to safely cross uneven rail easements and ascend steep rail ballasts.
- Full or Side Cabins – operator cabins come in either full vehicle width or partial (side) width configurations, each serving a different balance of cost and functionality. Both options allow for 360° operator visibility around the mover, though full cabins provide operators with unobstructed, straighter sightlines down both sides of their railcars.
- Integral Safety Systems – triple air blast horns, high-intensity LED lighting packages, 4-point strobe lights, 360° camera system with color monitors, emergency stop interrupts, and spring-actuated parking brakes are just a few of the advanced safety systems included with railcar movers.
- Advanced Technology – railcar movers are available with advanced technology systems including remote control drive operation, GPS locating, onboard diagnostic systems, and large LED/LCD operator interfaces for map and mission visibility.
- Operator Comfort Features – for either incidental or continuous operation, railcar movers offer many comfort features including ergonomic controls, air heating and cooling, tinted windows, angled boarding stairs with safety handrails, vibration- and sound-dampening components, comfort ride suspension, and positive-pressure cabins.
- All-Weather, Long-Life Construction – railcar movers are built for harsh environments and demanding duty cycles with features such as individually painted and sealed frame components, IP 67 weatherproof electronics, redundant air compressors, automatic track sand dispensers (for traction), undercarriage corrosion protection treatment, and expansive warranty coverage.
- Powerplant Options – most railcar movers are offered with stout Tier 4 4/6-cylinder turbodiesel engines, though newly emerging electric lead-acid battery powered options are entering the market. Most modern diesel models come equipped with standard air pollution control components such as exhaust gas cooling and selective catalytic reduction technology, as well.
We hope that this discussion has been helpful for your commercial material handling needs. Fairchild Equipment is the Upper Midwest’s premier Material Handling Equipment and Service resource ready 24/7 to serve your needs throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, northern Illinois and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For more information or to discuss which material handling solutions might be best for you, please contact us online or give us a call at (844) 432-4724.
