Container Rail Freight

The box is the unit, not the wagon

Container rail freight moves standardised loading units on rail wagons. The point of the arrangement is that the unit is the constant: it is packed once at origin and opened once at destination, while the vehicle carrying it changes underneath. Nearly everything else about the service follows from that.

Because the unit is lifted rather than unloaded, transfers are quick compared with handling loose cargo, and the goods are not exposed at each change of mode. The price of that is rigidity. The consignment has to suit the unit, the unit has to suit the terminals, and the terminals have to be able to lift it. Where any of those three fails, the elegance of the idea does not help.

Container rail freight is not yet part of what LogisticID arranges; European road freight is the current business.

Equipment: whose box, and for how long

Someone owns the container, and it is rarely the shipper. Units are supplied by operators and leasing companies and are lent for a movement rather than sold, which creates obligations that sit outside the freight rate and are settled separately from it.

• Where the empty unit is collected from and where it must be returned to. Both are set by the supplying party, not by whatever would be convenient.
• How long the unit may be held for packing at origin and unpacking at destination. Time beyond the allowance is charged under terms that vary by supplier and location, so the allowance is a contractual fact for each movement and must be confirmed rather than assumed.
• The condition the unit is handed over in and handed back in, recorded at each interchange. Damage discovered later without a record becomes a dispute rather than a claim.
• Which equipment types can actually be positioned at that location. A plan built on a type that is not available there is not a plan.

Why empty repositioning shapes the price

Loading units accumulate wherever cargo flows and then have to be moved back against that flow. Nobody pays to move an empty box for its own sake, so the cost of returning it is carried inside the price of the loaded movements around it.

That is why a routing which looks efficient in one direction can be awkward and expensive in the other, and why equipment availability at a given place is a separate question from whether trains run through it. A balanced flow in both directions is worth more to a shipper than it first appears, because it is worth a great deal to whoever owns the equipment.

Terminals decide what is possible

A container rail plan is only ever as good as the terminal at each end of it. These are the questions that settle a routing before any schedule is discussed.

• Whether the terminal handles the unit type at all, including any that need power, extra height or non-standard lifting.
• What the opening arrangements are, and whether a road vehicle can realistically deliver or collect within them.
• How the unit is accepted and released, and what documentation the terminal requires to do either.
• Whether there is room to hold the unit when the road leg and the rail leg do not meet cleanly, and what holding it costs.
• How the road approach performs. A terminal with congested access gives back the time the rail leg was chosen to save.

Why the plan has to be re-established each time

Container rail schedules and corridor availability are not durable facts. Services are added, altered, suspended and withdrawn in response to demand, equipment positions, infrastructure works, border and regulatory conditions, and commercial decisions taken by operators. A routing that ran in a previous season is evidence of very little about the next one.

For that reason this describes how container rail works and deliberately says nothing about the current state of any specific corridor. Availability, routing, frequency and viability have to be established for the shipment being planned, at the time it is planned, from the operators concerned. Anything else is a claim with a short shelf life, and a shipper who plans against it is planning against a guess.