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Sidebar: Raildecks Offers Intermodal Option for Heavy Industrial Freight
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Before now, if you were a shipper needing to move very heavy, awkward industrial freight, you were limited to using over-the-road truck transportation. Commodities such as steel pipe, beams, rods, and wood products traditionally relied on flatbed as their primarily transportation mode. This type of freight just didn’t fit well into a standard domestic intermodal container. But, that has all changed and shippers now have an intermodal option that moves at truck-like speeds.
Canadian-based Raildecks provides a dual-purpose 53-foot collapsible, stackable, multi-access container that operates as a double-stacking intermodal container for open-deck freight transportation, explains Dennis Hedlund, director of U.S. operations. “Raildeck containers are capable of carrying up to 60,000 pounds in payload, and offer loading access from the top, sides, and rear of the container,” he says.
The product is a container without sides or a roof, continues Hedlund. Two sets of posts on the deck provide structural support. Since the Raildecks solution is designed for double-stacking intermodal transport, the posts were engineered to absorb the weight of the second containers. “The problem in the past were that these posts that had been in the way for loading bulky freight, which means there was a large portion of the deck space that could not be loaded,” he says. Specially designed controls now move those posts out of the way for loading. The rear bulkhead is equipped with swing freight doors to facilitate loading and unloading, similar to dry-van loading.
The equipment arrives at the shipper looking like any other container in the sense that it uses a standard chassis and that you load it like a regular flatbed truck. “We spend a lot of time working with draymen to assure everything is secured properly,” says Hedlund. “Then the container moves to the railroad ramp just like any other container and a crane lifts it and places it on the intermodal train. It arrives at its destination and is then delivered like a regular flatbed shipment.”
After an eight-month pilot test with Class I railroads, shippers, and motor carriers, Raildecks plans to launch the first commercial version of the equipment by the second quarter of 2011.
Canadian-based Raildecks provides a dual-purpose 53-foot collapsible, stackable, multi-access container that operates as a double-stacking intermodal container for open-deck freight transportation, explains Dennis Hedlund, director of U.S. operations. “Raildeck containers are capable of carrying up to 60,000 pounds in payload, and offer loading access from the top, sides, and rear of the container,” he says.
The product is a container without sides or a roof, continues Hedlund. Two sets of posts on the deck provide structural support. Since the Raildecks solution is designed for double-stacking intermodal transport, the posts were engineered to absorb the weight of the second containers. “The problem in the past were that these posts that had been in the way for loading bulky freight, which means there was a large portion of the deck space that could not be loaded,” he says. Specially designed controls now move those posts out of the way for loading. The rear bulkhead is equipped with swing freight doors to facilitate loading and unloading, similar to dry-van loading.
The equipment arrives at the shipper looking like any other container in the sense that it uses a standard chassis and that you load it like a regular flatbed truck. “We spend a lot of time working with draymen to assure everything is secured properly,” says Hedlund. “Then the container moves to the railroad ramp just like any other container and a crane lifts it and places it on the intermodal train. It arrives at its destination and is then delivered like a regular flatbed shipment.”
After an eight-month pilot test with Class I railroads, shippers, and motor carriers, Raildecks plans to launch the first commercial version of the equipment by the second quarter of 2011.
It’s definitely a big advantage that the container is collapsible and very flexible with its capabilities. With these different ways, unloading and loading of good will be very easy. It can result to faster processing of shipments because the access of unloading and loading of goods is also improved. Plus, the idea of designing it to be a double-stacking intermodal transport is smart. That would make the process even more efficient and quick.
ReplyDelete-Valentina Moors