same customer 2 plants opposite sides of town, sharing loads

[h44]

say 2 bakery type manufactures in the same town merged , both facilities have the same basic ingredients and management decided to keep both places open, would it be feasible say both facilities orders 50 tons of sugar, from the same supplier would it be practical for both orders to be sent in one 100 ton covered hopper dropped at one facility to have half of the load unloaded then send it over to the second facility to unload the rest?
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mark

 

[Iron Horseman]

In concept yes. This would not be unlike what many industries have called "internal" moves. This is where a car would need to be moved from one position to another.

E.g. a packing house moving a reefer car from the sanitation facility, to the icing station, and then over to the actual slaughter house. Stock cars from the cattle yards to the cleaning track. etc.

Most companies that need a lot of this sort of thing, like the Coors brewery here in Denver, and the Colorado Fuel and Iron steel mill in Pueblo, have their own switch engines to perform such work (actually I think technically they have their own railroads).

Usually this type of move doesn't involve the car leaving the industrial area. If these two proverbial bakeries would require the car to return to the main, on the books it would be treated by the railroad as a separate trip and probably very expensive. On a model there is nothing preventing scheduling the hopper to move from bakery 1 to bakery 2, regardless of the "billing".

 

[DairyStateDad]

Having covered business news for nearly 30 years, I found myself questioning a couple of things, but by no means am I certain about any of this.

1) Usually when a company takes over another company, one thing they move quickly to do is make sure they get rid of any unneeded duplication. They might even need to do that to help pay for the transaction. Even if they have bought the other company because they need more capacity, I think they usually try to focus individual plants on particular niches or product lines. So, with the situation you're describing, I would think that the two plants would be given non-overlapping specialties. The new owner would put all the bread-baking operations in one plant, say, and maybe focus the other one on making cakes and pies, or something like that.

2) Besides the cost of the "separate trip" as Iron Horseman points out, I wonder -- how easy is it to unload a specific, measured amount from a covered hopper? This is entirely beyond my level of knowledge, of course. But my first guess is that it's not that easy. Somehow I'd think that the company would seek to rationalize its supply chain procedures so that each delivery is going to be simply enough for that one plant. But perhaps there's more "LCL" traffic in the covered-hopper domain than I realize.

The idea that IH hints at, in which cars are moved internally to the company because different activities are required makes sense to me. I don't know who is responsible for cleaning a covered hopper after it has emptied its shipment (is anyone?) -- but perhaps Plant A is where all the empties are sanitized before being sent back to the supplier or something like that.

All that said, I think I "get" the idea of some operating interest created by having a car that serves two different plants on the layout. Hopefully someone will be able to suggest real life examples of that...

 

[3 Fingered Jack]

If we are talking about partially unloading a car at an industry and then having the railroad pick up the car and move it to another industry where the remainder of the cargo is unloaded, it is called "Breaking Bulk".

"Breaking Bulk" isn't something that the railroads ever liked to do. It the old days it was done, it was often billed as LCL (less than car load) rates. In the modern age I don't know if a railroad would do it at all.

 

[dinwitty]

it may be possible, but the extra move over the railroad may cost a little more, they might just have 1 full carload for each one and hold it for each.

 

[trailrider]

Let's look at this from a different angle... What kind of material is being delivered? Is it flour or sugar, or both? In that case, instead of using a covered hopper, why not a boxcar with sacks of whatever? Then, at least you wouldn't have to worry about dumping a partial load from a covered hopper. You might even have the sacks palletized to facilitate unloading, say with a forklift (with an experienced operator who wouldn't damage the sacks). As to the cost of moving the car from one place to another, I'll bow to experienced railroaders.