The transport of truck trailers by train has traditionally been limited to long haul transport. Trailer design, railroad car design and scheduling problems have made it difficult for trains to compete in short and medium haul corridors. To date, trailers have had to be reinforced to handle the stress of rail transport. In addition, trucking companies have been forced to accept fairly wide windows of time for delivery.
Currently, trucking customers arrive at the train terminal and wait in line for a clerk to manually input the details of the shipment at the gate, to include billing information, contents of the truck, owner, driver, destination, weight, commodity code, commodity description, package type, broker and other pertinent information needed to transport the trailer and provide billing information. This process is time consuming and tedious; tractor-trailer drivers may wait in line at the gate for over an hour as each truck ahead of his goes through the check-in process. In addition, the time required to check-in a trailer is lengthy.
Furthermore, transport of trailers via rail has been unpredictable. When the trucking customer arrives with a trailer to transport, they do not know if their trailer will be transported on the next train. The customer's container may be left behind for subsequent trains. In addition, it can be difficult to determine the train the trailer will be on and when that train will arrive at its destination. As a result trailer transportation via rail is an unreliable, frustrating and complex system.
Trucks are a very efficient transportation medium, especially in short and medium haul corridors. Over the last 10 to 15 years, there have been a variety of attempts by the railway industry to move truck trailers onto rails. As noted above, most of these attempts to create intermodal transportation systems, however, require expensive modifications to the trailer to make it sturdy enough to withstand forces applied by cranes and by transport on the rails. Also the cost of building and outfitting railway terminals for truck transport is very expensive. A complex railway system for loading and loading trains is needed. In addition, trucking companies chafe at the long delays and complex processes of the railway companies.
What is needed is a simple and reliable transport system which ensures that a train leaves on schedule and arrives at its destination within a predetermined, narrow window of time.
In addition, what is needed is a low cost high quality profitable intermodal system that reduces current bottlenecks and provides an efficient means of transporting trailers via rail.
Finally, what is needed is a system and method for efficiently and economically transporting trailers via train across high density corridors.