Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 10:41 pm
There do exist “railcars” that are basically intermodal trailers that slide onto train wheels. These eliminate cranes or container movers at the destination.
Thing is though, you’d still need a trailer mover at the destination, and possibly a forklift to move the bogies off the track.
Travel time on rail will also be at least 24 hours longer, give it take, due to how the Oak Island-Browns transfer is set up and the fact that 31 would have to bring the train down the day after, vs maybe an hour maximum to the port. One upside of using rail here? Not having to deal with apocalyptic truck congestion at Maher Terminals/Port Newark plus whatever fees they charge to go in there. But even so…
This place doesn’t sound like it will be getting that much truck traffic anyways, and if your only dealing with trucks every so often then rail is almost always unviable.
You are referring to Roadrailers. That was a Triple Crown service using equipment that they owned the patent to and will not be releasing it. They ran Roadrailer trains operated by Conrail then NS to the Port until shortly after split date. There were issues with non-union workers building and breaking down the trains. A few of the port companies started suing Triple Crown for an unfair advantage. Those companies then started to block NS from doing business at the ports. I watched a worker get extracted from the roadrailer equipment when I was working a PN job. I think that was the straw that broke the camels back. After that, I never saw a roadrailer again.
Your hatred of Maher Terminal suggests that you're a disgruntled former employee. Maher has the fastest turn around time for trucks, containers and our intermodal trains at Port Newark/Elizabeth. You want to see congestion, I suggest you look at PNCT.
CR7876 is 100% correct about Home Depot. I remember switching them quite often. The only ones complaining about our service were the workers who had to unload the cars saying that we're making them work to hard with all those deliveries.