(erielack) The advantages of faster intermodal

[Wdburt1_@_aol.com]

The advantages of intermodal speed, or absence thereof, depend on the primary 
geographic markets served.

In the New York-Chicago market of the 1960s and '70s, and to a (much) lesser 
extent the satellite lanes to/from Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, there 
were advantages to schedules faster than 28-30 hours.  They included:

1.)  A 20-24 hour schedule could drag inside the second-morning delivery 
window (on the street) those markets that required significant truck drayage.  
Think Milwaukee, Rockford, Danbury, New Haven, etc.  If you were NYC, you could 
compete in these markets like a boxer with a longer arm than your Erie 
Lackawanna opponent (or, much of the time, even the PRR).

2.)  You could compete for what was called "part truck load" or "top-off" 
freight--shipments that required limited consolidation at one or both ends.  
These were very profitable shipments for less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers and 
consolidators, who were a bigger factor then than now, and potentially high 
revenue business for the railroad.

3.)  If you were fast enough--and NYC's SuperVan trains were--you could 
compete for at least some second morning LTL shipments.  The first of these loads 
emerged from consolidation terminals about midnight and needed to arrive at the 
destination terminal about the same time.  EL could play the game of skewing 
departures or arrivals at one end to provide a generous amount of time for 
LTL, but the other end departed or arrived such that it became a third morning 
LTL schedule.

4.)  UPS needed basically all night to consolidate the freight, although the 
first shipments out of the terminal were to some degree targeted for 
intermodal (as with LTL).  Nobody, but nobody, could provide UPS with a second morning 
schedule in this geographic market.  But EL, limited to 28-30 hours, did 
something smart; it skewed the schedule to serve UPS.  The result--a departure that 
was well suited to UPS's needs, while allowing lots of time to recover from 
service problems vs. while meeting a third AM delivery standard for UPS.  

A lot of the art of scheduling for domestic intermodal has been lost as this 
nation's manufacturing base vanishes and we increasingly focus on moving huge 
land-ships loaded with containers full of imports.  I'm not sure that's what 
John Kneiling had in mind when he coined that term, but it fits.

WDB


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