Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Joint Intermodal Operations and Refrigerated Car Questions

Good Evening:

Does BNSF have any jointly-owned intermodal subsidiaries with eastern roads, such as the EMP Container operation UP jointly owns with Norfolk Southern and other roads?

Also, how many refrigerated boxcars does BNSF own? Is their fleet size comparable to the fleet owned by UP? Also, do they run any expedited trains of food products, like what UP runs in coordination with CSXT from the Pacific Northwest?

Thank you in advance.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/18 17:59 by PRR_4859.

BNSF is not part of the EMP or UMAX programs. They only move private containers and trailers.

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PRR_4859 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also, do they run any expedited trains of
> food products, like what UP runs in coordination
> with CSXT from the Pacific Northwest?
>
> Thank you in advance.

HA!!!  UP doesn't expedite anything.   Anything that needs to get from point A to point B on time and reliably is either shipped via truck or put on a BNSF train.  I'm just watching the markets and getting my popcorn.  If it gets bad enough maybe we will see UP in chapter 11.  Considering they blew literally all of their capital buying back overvalued shares and NOT investing in their infrastructure, it's not out of the question.    More likely I think that UP shares will fall hard at some point and be acquired by a large firm, such as what happened with BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway.  It's ok though, as long as we are going bankrupt with precision in mind everything will be sunshine and lollypops.  It might even be better!  Hell, we could achieve a zero operating ratio tomorrow if we just close up shop altogether!  Sell all our locomotives to Watco and G&W.  Even better, we can rip up all of our track and sell it back to the cities and counties so that they can build bike paths to their heart's content because those definitely add economic value!  We can run our entire economy on government inflation, minimum wage service jobs and bike paths! Yay, so many bike paths!! 

I apologize for the sarcasm.  I just had to vent.
 



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/18 20:20 by HogheadMike.

BNSF's refrigerated car fleet is much smaller than UP's--I think it's around 1600 cars, vs. UP's 4000 or so cars.  Plus, UP just placed a BIG order for new reefer cars (1000), with options for 600 more.   These will be 72' cars, I believe.

Remember CRYOTRANS is also out there with their private fleet, and they buy new cars every now and then, too.

"HA!!!  UP doesn't expedite anything."

From what i have seen, the "Z" trains carrying UPS business (and there are not many of them) run pretty much on time or are early even when crews are short which they were when i videotaped in the Blue Mountains in May.  But everything else can be anything from on-time to days late.
Dick EIsfeller
Big "E" Productions
Greenland, NH

BNSF lost a lot of thier reefer traffic in the Northwest during the meltdown back in 2014, and it's been very slow to come back. The northwest has been through a series of service meltdowns since 2014 due to heavy traffic and lack of capacity.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

UP has EMP joint program with NS and few smaller railroads. UP has UMAX joint program with CSX. BNSF had a NACS joint program with NS and other railroads but shut it down around 2005. Today, if you ship intermodal on BNSF you must provide your own containers or trailers.

gmojim