Western Railroad Discussion > no hi-cubes to NUMMI plant?

Did they ever ship auto parts in box cars to the NUMMI plant at Warm Springs, CA? I remember when WP and SP vied for the traffic to the Ford plant (such competition now replaced by a BNSF local). IIRC GM was exclusively SP. I always got a kick out of seeing the 80+' auto parts cars! I was looking at the NUMMI plant (combined Toyota and GM) on Terraserver and was surprised to find no spurs into the assembly plant, just 2 areas that load/unload cars (1 for Toyota, 1 for GM?). All the parts come in by truck/container? I guess the non-auto rack cars in the yards are for local industries, not NUMMI? Where was the Ford plant? EDIT- I see Ford plant to the south at Milpitas, between the 2 railroads. TIA!

mapboy

I thought most of the autoparts for NUMMI came in containers from Japan and elsewhere.

WAF Wrote:
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> I thought most of the autoparts for NUMMI came in
> containers from Japan and elsewhere.

Yes.

When Warm Springs was a GM auto plant, there was a dedicated auto parts train from South Chicago to Warm Springs (Rock Island #57, UP ARRO, SP UPWSA, but just ARRO to GM managers) operating six days per week. The Warm Springs parts petered down to about 1/3rd of a train by the time the GM plant closed in the 80s. After re-opening as NUMMI, there were no inbound auto parts via rail, and there still aren't any.

Best regards,

Rob L.

The autoparts come in from the midwest by UP doublestack container train to the Port of Oakland, then are drayed to Fremont. Coil steel also comes into Oakland and is drayed to Fremont. The only direct ship traffic out of Fremont are the completed vehicles. Back in the GM days autoparts would come in boxcars directly to the plant. Same with Ford in Milpitas. SP had 100% of the GM business, which they secured by being a big purchaser of GM locomotives (WP, conversely, bought much fewer). SP and WP alternated the Ford traffic; on WP the inbound parts train was called the Ford Fast, the outbound APUP or APRG (Auto Parts UP or Rio Grande, depending on whether UP or DRGW had the traffic east of Salt Lake City). While on the WP the Ford Fast was quite literally the hottest train on the railroad. Delaying the parts train jeopardized shutting down the Ford production line, and making WP's biggest customer very upset. Had UP not taken over the closure of the Ford plant in 1982 would have been a blow from which the WP might not have recovered.

Auto parts for the new auto plants in the south all arrive by truck. All of the Honda, Nissan, Hyuandi plants receive all parts by truck and most are from local area suppliers. The suppliers have to be a short truck haul from the plant. This is actually good for the local economy as more parts come from nearby industry.
GM, Ford and Chrysler have old parts plants that are many miles from the assembly plants and have to be hauled in rail boxcars. That is expensive. This may well be a reason that the Ford and GM plants in Atlanta and the Ford plant in Norfolk are closing.
I think Toyota plants in the east in Kentucky and Texas also receive parts only by truck. Not sure.

I like the auto parts trains, but they are fewer in number.
The auto industry has really changed.

I have purchased 3 Nissans recently. I am happy to support the local area company.

gmojim
Memphis

billmeeker Wrote:
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> SP had 100%
> of the GM business, which they secured by being a
> big purchaser of GM locomotives (WP, conversely,
> bought much fewer). SP and WP alternated the Ford
> traffic.

The fact that SP had 50% of the Ford account and 100% of the GM account had to do with (1) Ford vs. GM traffic management policy and (2) WP had no trackage rights into the GM Warm Springs plant. It had little or nothing to do with how many locomotives SP bought from EMD. In fact, in the 60s, SP turned pretty strongly to Alco and KM and away from EMD, but that had no effect on SP's retaining the GM auto parts and set-up autos traffic accounts.

Back in those days, Ford traffic management believed in spreading its business to foster competition, to prevent monopoly suppliers and to insure that a back-up was always available. So they insisted on their FAST parts train rotating between SP and WP and rotating between UP and MoP/RG. In contrast, GM management believed in a partnership with a single, excellent-performing partner. SP ran the GM auto parts trains to LA and to Warm Springs extremely well, those trains were religiously kept on time. SP also ran the outbound autos extremely well, putting them on their intermodal trains running as timetabled first-class trains.

Not to take anything away from the noble efforts of your beloved WP, but SP clearly earned the GM account.

Best regards,

Rob L.

One must look at the basis of GM's traffic "policy". The fact that a company like GM allowed a single tranportation company shows how much considerable clout SP had with them. This was at least in part because SP bought hundreds and hundreds of locomotives from GM (EMD), even in the 60's, and even SP was testing models from other manufacturers (those other models from Alco, GE, and KM were never more than a token presence on the SP locomotive roster).

WP tried but SP refused to allow WP to build a spur across the SP to reach the GM Warm Springs plant. This however, was only an annoyance in the entire picture to WP. SP traffic policy was to stifle the competition. This was their mantra and well established in SP history. GM could still have given the traffic to WP and the traffic could have been interchanged at Stockton or Milpitas (I don't know for sure if there was an interchange at Warm Springs at the time) or demanded that SP allow WP to build a spur across their track into the plant.

WP begged for some of the GM traffic, but GM always said no. Once GM threw WP a bone and gave them one (yes, ONE) carload of auto parts over a period of months to see if they could match SP's on-time performace. WP did, until Stockton that is, where the interchange went to SP, who didn't have much incentive to move it expeditiously.

Another example of how much clout SP had was despite the fact that WP did all the work to prepare for the new Ford plant in Milpitas (engineering, yard construction, etc.), SP still got 50% of the traffic when the plant opened.



rob_l Wrote:
>
> The fact that SP had 50% of the Ford account and
> 100% of the GM account had to do with (1) Ford vs.
> GM traffic management policy and (2) WP had no
> trackage rights into the GM Warm Springs plant. It
> had little or nothing to do with how many
> locomotives SP bought from EMD. In fact, in the
> 60s, SP turned pretty strongly to Alco and KM and
> away from EMD, but that had no effect on SP's
> retaining the GM auto parts and set-up autos
> traffic accounts.
>
> Back in those days, Ford traffic management
> believed in spreading its business to foster
> competition, to prevent monopoly suppliers and to
> insure that a back-up was always available. So
> they insisted on their FAST parts train rotating
> between SP and WP and rotating between UP and
> MoP/RG. In contrast, GM management believed in a
> partnership with a single, excellent-performing
> partner. SP ran the GM auto parts trains to LA and
> to Warm Springs extremely well, those trains were
> religiously kept on time. SP also ran the outbound
> autos extremely well, putting them on their
> intermodal trains running as timetabled
> first-class trains.
>
> Not to take anything away from the noble efforts
> of your beloved WP, but SP clearly earned the GM
> account.

Not sure if they still due, but the beds for the Tacoma trucks are trucked on special trailers from TABC in Long Beach (Toyota Auto Body Company) to Numi.

I used to haul the steel into TABC.

billmeeker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One must look at the basis of GM's traffic
> "policy". The fact that a company like GM allowed
> a single tranportation company shows how much
> considerable clout SP had with them. This was at
> least in part because SP bought hundreds and
> hundreds of locomotives from GM (EMD), even in the
> 60's, and even SP was testing models from other
> manufacturers (those other models from Alco, GE,
> and KM were never more than a token presence on
> the SP locomotive roster).
>
> WP tried but SP refused to allow WP to build a
> spur across the SP to reach the GM Warm Springs
> plant. This however, was only an annoyance in the
> entire picture to WP. SP traffic policy was to
> stifle the competition. This was their mantra and
> well established in SP history. GM could still
> have given the traffic to WP and the traffic could
> have been interchanged at Stockton or Milpitas (I
> don't know for sure if there was an interchange at
> Warm Springs at the time) or demanded that SP
> allow WP to build a spur across their track into
> the plant.
>
> WP begged for some of the GM traffic, but GM
> always said no. Once GM threw WP a bone and gave
> them one (yes, ONE) carload of auto parts over a
> period of months to see if they could match SP's
> on-time performace. WP did, until Stockton that
> is, where the interchange went to SP, who didn't
> have much incentive to move it expeditiously.
>
> Another example of how much clout SP had was
> despite the fact that WP did all the work to
> prepare for the new Ford plant in Milpitas
> (engineering, yard construction, etc.), SP still
> got 50% of the traffic when the plant opened.
>
>
As rob said, who got the auto traffic had little to do with the locomotive business. The railfan "community" always uses this to justify why a carrier bought EMD locomotives or why Alco failed.

Truth of the matter is that while EMD is/was a big locomotive supplier, they were a very small GM division. The fact that they were very profitable kept EMD around for a number of years but their size worked against them within GM. EMD largely had control of the market due to the the quality of their product and had little need to through their weight around for locomotive orders. Even carriers that had little GM business bought EMD locomotives in large quantities.

A more recent example is Norfolk Southern who bought fewer than 100 EMD's while buying better than 1000 GE's from 1995-2004. Yet GM was in the top three of NS's customer list for all of those years.

Would SP have bought all of those EMD's had they not had the GM traffic? Of course not. The lower level of business resulting from the absence of the traffic would have reduced purchases.

The domestic industry is starting to catch on to the idea of local parts supplies, too. DaimlerChrysler is developing a "campus" approach to building Jeeps at Toledo North. Even at the old plant here, trucks brought in all the components not made on-site, but at the new complex supplier factories have been built during the last two years so that more and more of the production is on-site. The main assembly plant built c. 1999-2000 has one big improvement for outbound rail shipment of finished vehicles -- an on-site autorack loading area, which supplanted a lot on the other side of the Ann Arbor tracks for which short-distance trucking was required. (The old lot, belonging to the AA, is now used by Ford for local distribution.)

I like the high-cube trains, but the most important thing is that the domestic auto industry do whatever it takes to be competitive. The automotive sector represents some of the highest-value traffic that the railroads have.

When GM/Toyota re-opened the Warm Springs plant, the UP already taken over the WP and had been the GM east-of-Ogden carrier already and wanted the whole haul. As an ex-WP, now-UP surveyor, we were sent to Warm Springs to survey a possible new connection crossing the SP at the north end of the plant. We didn't have much choice but to take a couple of shots (survey) on the SP main. They must have been waiting for us in the weeds because we were soon met (about 10 minutes) by a 2-man SP Bull contingent, who immediately wrote us up and kicked us out. We drove straight back to our office at Stockton, where our boss had just gotten off of the phone with the Omaha higher-ups, who had just been warned at the highest levels from the highest levels at SP San Fran. "Our side" was pretty interested in how we were treated (which was not bad). Anyway, the "project" was officially put on-hold while they went to the ICC, where the SP was "forced" to allow the UP access to the plant. It was negociated to put in the interchange tracks between the mainlines, where the SP would come in and do the switching.
As said before, the trains to/from the "new" plant never had any hi-cube parts cars. Our trains had only autoracks and TOFC, which was taken to a new ramp at the old Hadley facility at the Milpitas plant for ramping.

rh
SPO