Commentary Land Lines

By Larry Gross

The news is not the presence of a meltdown , but rather , the absence of one .

In one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ’ s famous Sherlock Holmes short stories , “ Silver Blaze ” — a mystery involving the disappearance of a famous racehorse and the death of its trainer — the culprit is ultimately identified in part by the fact that the stable ’ s watchdog was not heard barking that night . Holmes infers from this that the dog knew the murderer , and that the canine thought that this familiar individual offered no threat .

There is , perhaps , an intermodal equivalent of late , and that is the fact that despite multiple highly disruptive exterior events , there has not been an intermodal service meltdown . Yes , the system has seen some bending , but it has not broken . The news is mainly not the presence of stories covering a meltdown , but rather , the absence of them .

A list of the disruptive elements thus far this year is enough to make your head spin . Inland point intermodal movements of ISO containers out of California rose 40 % in the third quarter versus the prior year — a huge increase that necessitated massive repositioning of railcar and locomotive capacity . A rail strike in Canada , although thankfully short-lived , completely shut down operations north of the border in late August . Three major hurricanes caused major impacts in the Southeast in late summer and fall . To top

Shutterstock . com it all off ( so far ), the brief longshore strike at the beginning of October affected every port from Maine to Texas .

This is not to say that intermodal ’ s performance has been immaculate . Far from it . There has been congestion on the West Coast and dwell times have lengthened . The metrics tracked by the US Surface Transportation Board ( STB ) have shown the strain . Most notably , average intermodal train speeds have dropped well below average — 29.1 mph in the last week of October vs . an average of 30.5 mph for that week over the previous five years . In the same week , the number of loaded intermodal cars that did not move for 48 hours or more was up by about 25 % versus the five-year average , another negative sign .

But the number of intermodal trains that were holding prior to departure due to lack of crews , locomotives or other causes was still actually a bit below normal , indicating adequate supplies of these key capacity limiters . The takeaway is that while the intermodal network was laboring , it was still fluid and there was no service meltdown .

Advance warning helped

The railroads had an advantage in that most of these events , with the exception of the hurricanes , had plenty of advance warning , so they had time to put their contingency plans in place . Volume was proactively throttled in advance of the disruptions , preventing the system from clogging up and facilitating a quick recovery . Equipment was repositioned to handle the surges . Sufficient numbers of train-operating personnel , cars and locomotives were available and put to use .

Helping the situation was the adequate availability of other non-railroad indicators that were in short supply the last time around . This includes drayage capacity , chassis capacity and warehouse space , both at transload sites near the ports and at inland locales . These all combined to keep the pipelines open and flowing .

The results point toward the conclusion that lessons were learned during the recent meltdowns and improvements have been made . The performance hasn ’ t been perfect , but as Winston Churchill is reputed to have said , “ Perfection is the enemy of progress .”

email : lgross @ intermodalindepth . com

60 Journal of Commerce | December 2 , 2024 www . joc . com