Railway Performance Report - Grain Week 6‏

[TOM4CWB]

The Ag Transport Coalition Grain Week 6 railway performance measurement report is attached. The report covers 90% of grain movement originating in Western Canada.



The weekly report details railway performance for the current grain year across a range of key indicators including rail car demand, railway car supply, timeliness of railway car supply in response to weekly customer orders, unfulfilled shipper demand, corridor performance, railway dwell times at origin and railway dwell times at destination.



Key figures from Grain Week 6:

CN and CP supplied 8,839 (90%) of the 9,872 hopper cars ordered for delivery in Grain Week 6 resulting in 1,033 hopper car orders remaining outstanding.
CN supplied 92 % of the hopper cars that were ordered for Grain Week 6.
CP supplied 87 % of the hopper cars that were ordered for Grain Week 6.
CN supplied 83% of orders in non-bulk corridors including the USA/Mexico.
CP supplied 77% of orders in non-bulk corridors including the USA/Mexico
1,255 (14%) of the cars ordered for Grain Week 6 were supplied early (the prior week).
Grain Year to Date

89% of hopper car orders have been delivered by CN and CP for the want week.
7% of hopper car orders have arrived 1 week late.
4% of hopper car orders are outstanding.
741 cars supplied by railways have been rejected by shippers as unsuitable for loading due to mechanical or sanitary reasons.
Past weekly reports can be found on the Ag Transport Coalition website: www.agtransportcoalition.com



* The Ag Transportation Coalition is comprised of the Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA), the Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC), Pulse Canada, the Manitoba Pulse Growers Association (MPGA), The Western Grain Elevator Association (WGEA), the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association (COPA), the Inland Terminal Association of Canada (ITAC) and the Canadian Special Crops Association (CSCA)

[bucket]

On average they are missing 10 percent. Every week.

That's still alot of points not getting movement.

Ports have room.

Smaller crop and these two are still not getting it done.

Talked to a few elevators that would like to buy grain but the cars are a few days late.

I can't drive my grain to where railways service - it's too expensive time wise, truck wise, or highway wise.

[FarmRanger]

<i>"4% of hopper car orders are outstanding."</i>
Doesn't that indicate that there are 4% of cars ordered that haven't been received at all? That's a heck of a lot better than the last couple of years.
Hopefully it means that we'll get back to a functioning market where grain buyers can make sales and know they can get the product there. Once they know the risk of transportation failure is minimal, they can up their bids.

Getting oil off the rails and into pipelines would also help immensely. Tell your politicians we need the rail capacity for grain.

[farmaholic]

Holy crap FarmRanger, they were penalizing(taking the money out of the wrong pocket) the wrong group for poor rail service. How is it I should recieve less for someone else's incompetence?

[FarmRanger]

You shouldn't, but the CN and CP weren't being held accountable because they have been allowed to operate as monopolies. There is no competition in rail service and this situation has existed for a very long time. The only difference is now there isn't an entity forcing farmers to hold grain off of the rail system with quotas when capacity is strained.
It has made the lack of sufficient capacity situation much harder to ignore when it isn't just grain that isn't being shipped.

[TOM4CWB]

VERY good point! Hard to change things... when those hurt (farmers) were not responsible. Now we can see.. . Transparency.

[tweety]

What is the max weekly capacity of cars for CN CP?

[farmaholic]

Tinfoil hat time but with a huge element of truth.

So why would the railways EVER want to supply every car ordered? Wouldn't that simply cheapen the value of their services if demand was constantly met? Supply and demand, how else can they justify higher rates if orders are always 100% current. Increases in their costs could be used as an excuse but when was the last costing review done?

Seems only Producers will try to overproduce to compensate for low prices. When will we ever catch on?

[TOM4CWB]

Farmaholic;

That does not make logical sense.

Hoppergraincars will be supplied eventually anyway.... why not when they are needed for ships?

There is a need to economically provide an 'incentive' to CNCP... regulation needs to be allowed to discount CNCP earnings if they don't provide adequate service... Like CNCP charge us demurrage when we don't load grain cars on time.

[riders2010]

When the cwb was in place every local terminal In our area offered to take wheat now if you want to sell wheat you have to truck it to a further terminal that are increasingly becoming crop specific. We re waiting months to move peas flax etc or truck it further and further. Is that shown in the report?

We re talking more and more about percentages but what is the history on numbers moved and ordered. It I order 1000 cars and 500 are moved I m still better than if I order 10 and 10 show up.

Canola hasn't moved here for over 3 weeks and no word on when it will. I sure don't see anything being improved.

[bucket]

Same here riders.

The closest two points don't know when they will buy wheat.

It means trucking further.

Tom's probably getting serviced being closer to the coast.

Why pull grain from the middle of saskatchewan if they can get it from Alberta?

[wmoebis]

Other than producer cars, "WE" don't load cars. "WE" pay the grain companies to load them then if "THEY" don't load them on time The Grain Companies" pass that back onto us. Do you think they are passing back the savings for loading unit trains or when ships are loaded early?

There is no reason that a grain company can't take grain in the month it is contracted for. Poor RR service should NOT be farmers fight. If grain companies want to contract they should build bigger facilities to handle that contract, just like farmers buy bins, store on the ground or what ever, to handle a big crop. Grain companies can get permission to use temporary storage from the CGC.

We are living in a different era than when we had orderly marketing and this was the very reason that the quota system was implemented. So that it didn't matter where you farmed you got to move at least some grain to help pay your bills.

Not saying that the change was all bad thing but it sure wasn't thought out.

[TOM4CWB]

Wm,

We have a shortline RR where we do load cars... for Grain co's especially that buy specialty grains. Innovation and creative people are the hallmark of the heritage here... in western Canada!