6.2.1 Rail
Railroads are considered to be slow movers of raw materials, such as coal, grain and sand and also low-valued manufactured goods like paper and wood products. They are basically long haulers of domestic goods and charge reasonable freight rates. Their main competitors are domestic water carriers for large, bulky products and motor carriers or ships for higher valued goods. The relatively slow speed and short car distance travelled in a day reflect the fact that the majority of freight car time is spent in loading and unloading operations, moving from place to place within terminals, classifying and assembling cars into trains, or standing idle during a seasonal slump in car demand (Ballou 2004, p171).
Railroads are either government owned (common carriers which sell their transportation services to all shippers) or privately owned (usually owned by shippers with the intent of transporting their own products). The majority of the railroads throughout the world are government owned. The primary unit for charging freight on common carrier railroads is called a carload (CL). This refers to a predetermined shipment size which is usually the capacity of a rail car. For smaller shipments, a less-than-carload (LCL) may be offered. In the United States, larger freight cars are being used with an average freight car capacity of 83 tons (in the US, 2000 pounds to the ton), and single-commodity trains (called unit trains) of 100 or more cars per train are being used with rate reductions of 25 to 40 percent over single carloads (Ballou 2004, p172).
In the past few decades railroads have lost much of their freight business to road hauliers or trucks, but recently with the increase in intermodal transport operations, they have been performing relatively well. They now offer their clients innovative services; for example, various stop-off privileges which permit partial loading and unloading between origin and destination points and pick-up and delivery of goods.
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