Western Railroad Discussion > Prime Intermodal trucking

Very good new Prime Intermodal website, with their new good looking Prime Intermodal logo and details on the flatbed container; check out the video,

http://primeintermodal.com/

gmojim

Jim, thanks for the post. Seems like Prime is getting to be one of the bigger trucking companies in the country...see their stuff all over the highways these days.

Thanks for the link Jim. I have seen Prime on UP quite a bit on the Salt Lake City to LA Z trains, along with Stevens, England and a few others. BNSF is picking them up out of San Bernardino, which seems to have a lot more refrigerated vans out of the LA Basin than Hobart. My question as always: can UP perform satisfactorily to keep the business? I have clients who ship refrigerated trailers quite a bit and have said they won't use intermodal except on the lowest value frozen foods because of 1) wide swings on reliability and 2) problems getting in and out of the gates. Can you comment?

StStephen Wrote:
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> Thanks for the link Jim. I have seen Prime on UP
> quite a bit on the Salt Lake City to LA Z trains,
> along with Stevens, England and a few others.
> BNSF is picking them up out of San Bernardino,
> which seems to have a lot more refrigerated vans
> out of the LA Basin than Hobart. My question as
> always: can UP perform satisfactorily to keep the
> business? I have clients who ship refrigerated
> trailers quite a bit and have said they won't use
> intermodal except on the lowest value frozen foods
> because of 1) wide swings on reliability and 2)
> problems getting in and out of the gates. Can you
> comment?

With intermodal, you have to look at the specific lane and the specific railroad, some are good reliability and some are not so good.
UP has greatly improved their intermodal service in the past 5 years.
If you have your computer billing correct with no bugs, the railroad gate problem should not be a factor.
Computer EDI transfers can have problems, but they are very rare,

gmojim

I am seeing more and more England containers (18 to 20) on UP's Lathrop Z's Others too, but England dominates each train; they seem to have gone "whole hog" on UP intermodal. I assume the same holds true for LA and PNW on UP.

England containers run on BNSF Z trains to Atlanta GA

gmojim