Car Types

For some additional information....

C114 is a modern jumbo grain hopper

C214 is a Plastic Pellet covered hopper

C112 is a newer larger capacity two bay covered hopper (C111 is the older smaller version)

C113 is a traditional grain hopper (many were built between 1965-1985)

J311 is a rotary dump coal gondola ( a lot of the older coal gondolas are now being used to haul scrap metal. Some are even hauling logs)

T106 is a general service tank that can be found in multiple types of service from vegetable oil to ethanol

T389 is a large tank car typically used in LPG and Anhydrous Ammonia service 

C114/C214

The main difference between a C114 grain service hopper and a C214 plastic pellet service hopper are the bottom outlet gates. The grain service car has a sliding gate that allows gravity to unload the product. The C214 has a hose connection that allows the product to be vacuumed out. Here’s a shot of a BNSF C114 and a West Lake Polymers C214 on my Seaboard Central layout.

Covered hoppers win big

Interesting that covered hoppers own the whole top end of the list.  Is the revenue high for those simply because there are more of them, or is there something about the type of service they're in that can bring in higher rates, or perhaps be loaded a greater percentage of the time?

C111/C113

The smaller two bay C111/C112 were designed from the start to haul a dense/heavy product that would not be suitable to be transported by a larger capacity car. Today a lot of private marked C112 hoppers have replaced the older C111 hoppers in cement service. A lot of the C111 cars, especially those that are railroad marked can be found hauling limestone or frac sand. 
At the same time many of the C113 cars have been bumped out of unit grain service by the larger capacity C114s. Most are used by smaller shippers in non-unit/single car service. Quite often these cars will haul fertilizer from January to June and Corn from July to December. Before being changed to haul corn they need to travel through a clean-out track where a high pressure wand is lowered down the top hatch and rinses the cars clean.

Besides corn, wheat and fertilizer, these cars can also be used to move lime and peanuts among other commodities.

Covered Hoppers for the win

Hi Ken,

Back when I was in car management I got into discussion with one of the managers that was helping me to understand the logic behind what determines which car types to invest in. For railroads, grain service covered hoppers are a wise investment. For one, they earn a whole lot more revenue on an annual basis than the traditional boxcar. Grain service covered hoppers typically found in unit train service can make multiple times more round trips per year than other car types simply because of the quick turnarounds. Solid commodity unit trains more or less loaded by a single origin going to a single destination is the closest thing to a truck-like service the railroad offers.

Most of the other car types comes down to either revenue/car or just the shear numbers. General service in the rail industry is mainly for raw products rather than finished products handled by trucks/intermodal.

Tim

Data

While not surprising (covered hoppers, tank cars and unit coal train cars have been dominate for decades), I don't quite understand the data.

Are the cars ranked by number of cars in service (largest car types)?

Are the cars ranked by "gross revenue earned"?

Unit grain trains

Interesting Tim.  There is a flour mill in my local area that gets unit grain trains regularly - I think those trains are mostly if not entirely newish BNSF hoppers.  I was pleased that one of our local regionals has the business, it hadn't occurred to me it's also earning money for BNSF.

Data

Appears to be the latter, although we probably would have been more interested in the former.

The heading in the image says "tally by railroad gross revenue earnings", but those are also some of the most common types of cars, so that certainly contributes to them being at the top of either list.

"Total number of cars" and "average gross revenue / car" would be interesting stats to actually make sense of the "total gross revenue earnings" number, and "total number of cars" would be a much simpler metric for us to understand how common things are. Total gross revenue as the statistic muddies things.

What's that phrase... "lies, damn lies, and statistics". To come up with meaningful or understandable numbers half the trick(?) is selecting the right metric.

Carloading

AAR carloading data by commodity  for 2019, top 10 commodities by carloads originated:

Coal vs Grain

So there were about 2-3 times as many coal loads as grain loads (I’m assuming grain and milled grain are both shipped in the same car type).  And coal also travels in unit trains a lot.  But the grain hopper came out on top for revenue per type.  Perhaps there are a lot more AAR car types for coal than for grain.  Or perhaps the rate per load is higher for grain than coal.  Maybe there is a glut of potential coal carrying cars in service so they’re cheap.

Plastic isn’t in the top 10 at all, but it was number 2 on the revenue list.  Maybe because a lot of the cars sit around loaded or partly loaded.

I’m also wondering about that Stone/clay/glass line.  Stone and clay I assume are bulk materials.  I wonder if the glass is also bulk broken down glass for recycling.

Not sure this information is much use from a strictly model railroad perspective, but it’s interesting on it’s own.

Never trust a statistic...

Hi,

while the (original) revenue table is rather interesting, as is the second table with the "commodities by carload", they only tell part of the whole story each.

First of all, I did not find a statement about the type of revenue - is it the fees for moving the loaded cars, the fees for storing empty or full cars, ??? It may well be that plastic cars generate revenue for being stored full of pellets while grain generates revenue for storing empty cars... Or even daily rates for car use?

In the same breath, I would think it makes a big difference WHO is assembling this kind of information and what kind of view they have on how the system operates. Does that person have the view of a local short-line or a nationwide operator - the results will differ...

Also very interesting is the fact that neither table has any indication of inter-modal traffic. Considering the fact that "containers are the new box-cars" and container trains are fairly common (as are auto-racks), I would have expected some mention... Which supports my theory that the tables are influenced by the view of the person assembling them... In my view there should be some inter-modal traffic on at least one of the tables...

Yes, the combination of these tables (and probably several other tables as well) gives a rather interesting and precise picture of what happened last year. It's not the complete picture, though.

Have fun!

PS: it may even be that the traffic types I'm missing have many different car types, so they would accumulate to rank four, but listed by car type they rank 12, 14, 15 and 21? Which is a different view on the table compared to what I would expect, thus imparts a certain subjective opinion.

Stats

Generally "revenue" means freight charges, charges for moving the car.  That does not typically include storage fees (many of which are associated with the track, not the car), per diem  or demurrage.  So "revenue" is a pretty clear term.

One also has to understand the purpose of the statistic.  Since this was done by AAR car type, its not the typical "performance" measure, its more a measure that would be used by people deciding on which type of car to invest in or to add to a fleet.  If you consider that today possibly the majority of cars are not owned by railroads but by leasing companies, that information might be useful to them.  If the information was collected for private investors, including "intermodal" wouldn't be useful, since very few intermodal cars are owned by private investors, the majority are owned by TTX.

One also has to realize that "intermodal" is not a "commodity".  Its a method.  The commodity is what's in the containers.  Plus its counted differently since the concept of "carload" is not the same.  For example the AAR said that there were 13,732,570 "units" of intermodal traffic loaded in 2019.  In this case a "unit" is the equivalent of a 20 ft container box.

While there may be differences in the way information is generated or measured, the source for the second data is the AAR.  Since its been collecting data for about a century, even if its not perfectly consistent between railroads, its consistent because its been measured the same way over the course of several decades.

The second set of data is probably less subject to variations in interpretation since it is "carloads originated".  That's pretty specific and universally understood, and would be very consistent between all railroads (probably why they use that measure).

Thanks for the clarification

Hi,

@Dave Husman: thanks for the clarification.

The explanation makes it easier to understand the tables. At the same time, it also demonstrates my point: the diagrams are clearly influenced by the view of the creator (or whomever set the rules for creating them). Inter-modal traffic is counted differently, revenue is only a part of the whole...

While the data is surely very correct, I just say the tables represent a view of a part of the whole picture. Different views of different parts may get to different results...

Have fun!

Measures

One of my last jobs I had was working with and developing measures for a railroad. Figuring out exactly what to measure and how that measure worked was challenging.  Things as basic as "departing on time" are subject to real life and to variations.  When does a train depart?  Is it when the Yardmaster tells the train to go, is it when the dispatcher gives it permission to enter the main track, is it when the first wheel turns, is it when the rear car enters the main track?  If the train moves in its originating track, is it the time the first wheel moves (used as "departure" by labor agreements for pay purposes)? 

But what happens if the train has to set out 2 bad orders found in the outbound inspection?  Has the train "departed" if it has moved in its originating track, but still hasn't entered the main track because its setting out bad orders?  From the crew pay standpoint, the train has departed, if the departure time is manually recorded, it may or may not have departed, from an automated/dispatching system measure the train probably hasn't departed.  A lot of "simple" stuff isn't so simple when you dig into it.

Glass...

Glass could take many forms, though I cannot say which of them moves by truck or rail (or both). They'd include: beer bottles, glass jars for food items such as pickles and pasta sauce, window glass, automotive glass, eye glasses, drinking glasses, plate glass for mirrors, spoilage (broken glass) from bottling plants, glass for recycling, glass for appliances, glass for medical use, and decorative glass (vases, stained glass, pipes for smoking, etc.)

"Glass," in this instance, might also be shorthand for the glass-making industry, and thus include the raw materials for making the glass itself. And if that's the case, "stone" could include headstones and granite countertops, and "clay" could include.... um.... that mud and muck that my dog tracks in from the back yard.

Broken glass

Broken glass is moved by covered hoppers for recycling. I’ve seen piles of it where I has leaked out of cars.

It has also moved in open top hoppers although not filled to the top of the car. All different sizes of stone are moved in open top hoppers.

Charcoal and coal is moved in covered hoppers. Some coal transported by covered hoppers is used for women’s makeup products.

Clay is moved in covered hoppers, large bags of clay moved in boxcars and clay slurry moved in tank cars. A big source of clay comes from Georgia around Tennile and Statesboro.

Tim