Lost N/S Customers

Meanwhile the litany of closing New Jersey manufacturing plants continues. Colgate-Palmolive was not a huge customer, but remained as one of the few left served by the H-02 out of Dover, and I believe the last customer on the M&E east of Denville. The closing that will really affect the NS in New Jersey is this year's closing of the BASF plant in Washington. It is a very large NS customer served by Allentown based locals. You'll notice both plants are moving from New Jersey to other locations in the US.

http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2013 ... plant.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Meant to include this link on the BASF closing:

http://urethaneblog.typepad.com/my_webl ... -site.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

riffian wrote:Meanwhile the litany of closing New Jersey manufacturing plants continues. Colgate-Palmolive was not a huge customer

Colgate is consolidating to their Piscataway facility however that location is not served by rail.

Colgate is consolidating to their Piscataway facility however that location is not served by rail.[/quote]

The news item is a bit confusing, but paragraph three states C-P is moving in to a new plant in the Southeastern US.

riffian wrote:The news item is a bit confusing, but paragraph three states C-P is moving in to a new plant in the Southeastern US.

They are a customer of ours and I was at the Morristown location last month, all of our contacts are moving to Piscataway according to what we were told. They may be moving certain products to other states but the personnel are staying in New Jersey.

Greg wrote:

riffian wrote:The news item is a bit confusing, but paragraph three states C-P is moving in to a new plant in the Southeastern US.

They are a customer of ours and I was at the Morristown location last month, all of our contacts are moving to Piscataway according to what we were told. They may be moving certain products to other states but the personnel are staying in New Jersey.

The article linked by ruffian shows that you are both right - Manufacturing is going to a different state, engineering, IT & support is moving to Piscataway

Three-hundred and fifty Colgate-Palmolive manufacturing employees will lose their jobs when the company shuts down its Morristown facility...
Two-hundred information technology and other non-manufacturing employees will be shifted to Colgate-Palmolive's Piscataway facility...
Colgate-Palmolive expects to have fully moved into a planned new manufacturing location in the Southeastern U.S.

Sir Ray wrote:

JohnFPorcaro wrote:I posted this over 5 years ago, since then Omega Warehouse in Totowa & my baby, W.A.S. are gone?

Your Omega Warehouse statement is a bit puzzling to me - I know websites don't always get updated in a timely fashion, but their website claims Omega is fully operational, and they are actively marketing their rail freight access - "...Both buildings have active rail siding serviced by Norfolk Southern. With 6 rail docks and 15 truck docks, shipping and receiving is carried out proficiently... ". OK, next step is to Google for terms like Omega Warehouse closing or for sale (e.g. doing this for Farmland readily brings up a number of articles) - while there are hits, they concern warehouses in other states, not the NJ site. OK, finally - take a look at Bing Birds Eye and Google Maps - you could make a case for the 912 Riverview Drive warehouse no longer being rail served (track needs a good brush cutting), but Bing has a few views of boxcars on the siding at 896 (albeit with a 2012 date).
So, did you see the nasty and dreaded "CBRE - Warehouse building for lease - 120,000 SF" signs suddenly posted outside the facilities, and nobody else noticed Omega was now history? (this being Jersey, that is certainly NOT an impossibility)

Omega Warehousing is gone. My mother was one of the five co-owners. Four of the owners were bought out by the fifth, who renamed the company Omega Logistics and moved it to a non-rail-served warehouse in Edison. I should probably tell my mom to take down the website.....

Interesting Rudy. I have a friend with a short-haul trucking company. I'm encouraging to look into buying a warehouse with rail access. But your mom's experience suggests that the economics weren't working for transloading. Is that the case?

My friend is in Connecticut.

ccutler wrote:Interesting Rudy. I have a friend with a short-haul trucking company. I'm encouraging to look into buying a warehouse with rail access. But your mom's experience suggests that the economics weren't working for transloading. Is that the case?

My friend is in Connecticut.

It wasn't a lack of success - in fact, the business was/is doing quite well. It was more a matter of owning a family business for 30 years, and five relatives trying to get along didn't translate well into business management.

therudycometh wrote:

ccutler wrote:Interesting Rudy. I have a friend with a short-haul trucking company. I'm encouraging to look into buying a warehouse with rail access. But your mom's experience suggests that the economics weren't working for transloading. Is that the case?

My friend is in Connecticut.

It wasn't a lack of success - in fact, the business was/is doing quite well. It was more a matter of owning a family business for 30 years, and five relatives trying to get along didn't translate well into business management.

OK...so why close down a successful warehouse/transload operation? Omega Logistics, which you said is the new name, seems mostly to have devolved into a Trucking company: "Omega Logistics Group Llc is a licensed and bonded freight shipping and trucking company running freight hauling business from Edison, New Jersey" (according to those funky "yellowbook" type listings that show up when the main company website hasn't been searched-robot indexed yet) with 4 trucks and 4 drivers (well, that works out ) since May 2013. Why not sell the dang warehouse operations in Totowa to some other company then?

Sir Ray wrote:

therudycometh wrote:

ccutler wrote:Interesting Rudy. I have a friend with a short-haul trucking company. I'm encouraging to look into buying a warehouse with rail access. But your mom's experience suggests that the economics weren't working for transloading. Is that the case?

My friend is in Connecticut.

It wasn't a lack of success - in fact, the business was/is doing quite well. It was more a matter of owning a family business for 30 years, and five relatives trying to get along didn't translate well into business management.

OK...so why close down a successful warehouse/transload operation? Omega Logistics, which you said is the new name, seems mostly to have devolved into a Trucking company: "Omega Logistics Group Llc is a licensed and bonded freight shipping and trucking company running freight hauling business from Edison, New Jersey" (according to those funky "yellowbook" type listings that show up when the main company website hasn't been searched-robot indexed yet) with 4 trucks and 4 drivers (well, that works out ) since May 2013. Why not sell the dang warehouse operations in Totowa to some other company then?

They do still have a very large warehouse space in Edison. They really weren't doing many rail inbounds anyway.

Birch Lumber got a boxcar today about 11:00 AM. Sorry, I didn't get the locomotive number. I was visiting a company around the corner that sells pharmacy supplies, was going out to the parking lot and saw the locomotive and boxcar backing across the concrete trestle over River Road; followed it around the corner to see where it went. (What a lumber company wants with a boxcar I don't know, unless NS was just leaving it on their siding for eventual redelivery elsewhere.)

Interesting thing is, I looked at the google satellite view, you can't even tell there's a siding there. You can barely see the switch from the third track, then it just vanishes. There's a dumpster serving as an end-of-track bumper; the rails continue past there until they disappear under the asphalt in the Northeast Lock parking lot.

Thanks for the news

Birch Lumber is getting deliveries again. A center beam was dropped off today and they had one a few weeks ago.

I am pleased to report having seen at least four flarcars with blue trash container loads at the BRI Trash Transfer station while riding on BUT today. Hopefully this business is back on the rails.