Eastern Railroad Discussion > Prime boxes now seen in NS 264 Ayer MA block

As of roughly 4/26/24, Amazon Prime containers have begun to show up in NS IM train 264's Ayer block of single stacked containers (264 departs 63rd St IM pad in Chicago with 3 blocks: a double stacked block for Taylor Yard Scranton head out; the single stacked block of 70 +/- Ayer-bound containers; and the double stacked block for Mechanicville on the marker). 264 is not a priority pig train for NS as it advertises 78 hour cutoff to availability transit between Chicago and Ayer MA - it takes NS twice as long to move containers v. CSX Chicago to Worcester with its cutoff to availabilty transit time of 37 hours. 

The question is what are presumably priority Prime boxes doing taking 3 days to go from Chicago to the Boston area on NS when CSX will get them there in a day and a half? It could be these Smile boxes aren't priority deliveries to Amazon distribution centers but rather are in service to a non-Amazon shipper via its Amazon Freight network of logistics service. Does anybody know?

Amazon Freight



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/24 03:56 by JPB.

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My guess would be that these are for restocking the warehouses, probably with non-time sensitive freight, so they would be shipped based more on rate cost than fast service.  In addition, NS might also be the primary contract rail transport holder for Amazon.

I was also wondering what those boxes contained. Too slow for shipments for Amazon Prime customers and, as noted, possibly freight to restock warehouses. I wonder if Amazon might even lease unneeded containers to other shippers. A little extra money and good advertising?

In a few more months, their ride on NS should be speeding up, when these trains start running on the CSX (B&A) instead of the tortuously slow Pan Am Southern (B&M) route that requires the single-stacking.