Covered Hoppers - Where are they Going?

I've noticed both in person and in several YouTube videos that NY&A is handling a sporadic number of gravity-outlet covered hoppers - the type that is commonly used for grain transport. Please note these are NOT the Pressure Differential types that usually carry flour, corn starch, sugar, etc., and NOT the pneumatic types that carry plastic pellets. The covered hoppers that I'm referring to, as I said, have gravity discharge gates and the most obvious explanation to me is that they are carrying grain, wheat, corn kernels or some other bulk agricultural commodity of some sort. Who on the island would receive cars such as these? I never figured Long Island to receive grain, corn, or anything like that. Of course I could be wrong...

Does anyone know where these gravity discharge covered hoppers are going? Who is/are the customer(s), and what are these covered hoppers carrying? Thanks guys!

Plastic pellets for allied extruders in blissville, or favorite plastic on the bay ridge branch. I doubt there's a lot of videos of those moves through, so I'm not sure what LI customers get those cars as well.

Hicksville team yard was packed with covered hoppers today, especially the eastern-most track in the yard. Some tankcars and I believe a few boxcars in there as well, and an LIRR MP-15ac laying over next to the Main Line.

So they use gravity-discharge grain cars to transport plastic pellets? Doesn't make sense, since plastic pellets are normally vacuumed out of the car through pneumatic discharge outlets and then sucked through a series of pipes and into silo structures. Those weren't the cars I was referring to.

These are the kinds of covered hoppers I'm talking about, your regular "grain type" covered hoppers:

http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetai ... toID=69700

I have no idea what they're doing on the island when I see them every now and then, albeit infrequently. Anyone?

Did you happen to catch any reporting marks or numbers? Those are definitely grain cars.

Saw one of those behind Allied 2 weeks ago. A little less common but they do show up.

Could you provide a link to the videos? Reporting marks?

In the past there have been carloads of salt and flyash (admix for concrete)

Here's a video showing the covered hoppers I was talking about, towards the end of the train: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssn3UkhP ... re=related

That was probably for an order of Bentonite to cap another section or level of the Brookhaven landfill. I believe that time the shipment was being transloaded at Prima in Holtsville, LI NY. In the past the bentonite has been unloaded by both NYAR and LIRR at different locations. That was the commodity in the DM&E cars which has now folded in CP Rail. They usually were BN, BNSF cars carrying it. Maybe CP Rail offered a better rate then the other railroads. Every few years those cars are around for the capping of the Brookhaven landfill.