(The following article by Ann Bailey was posted on the Grand Forks Herald website on April 29.)
McCANNA, N.D. — Despite its location within a few feet of a railroad, North Star Bean Co. gets hit in the bottom line with trucking costs.
That’s why North Star Bean manager Jim Enger was hoping that Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway would repair the track that lies next to his elevator, instead of proposing to abandon the section.
The six-mile section of track is among 50 sections that BNSF has proposed abandoning in North Dakota, according to the North Dakota Public Service Commission. The railroad notified the PSC this week of its intent to abandon and said it will be filing that proposal with the federal Surface Transportation Board on or after May 1, said Bill Binek, PSC chief council.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas confirmed that.
“BNSF has filed an intent to abandon the line between Hannah Junction and McCanna due to the fact that market demands do not justify operations and maintenance expenses to operate,” Melonas said. “The line will be put up for sale.”
A comment period will be held and, if after that period the board approves BNSF’s proposal to abandon the track, the railroad likely would begin removing the six-mile section within the next few months, Binek said.
Rail the better option
Most abandonment proposals are approved by the board, and few are protested by North Dakota shippers, Binek said. Track must be out of service for two years before it can be eligible for abandonment, so in most cases, shippers who had used the BNSF line would already have made alternative arrangements, such as transporting commodities by truck.
But Enger doesn’t believe the alternative is as good as shipping by rail. Instead of shipping edible beans directly from his own plant to their destination, the commodity must first be trucked to area elevators where it’s loaded onto railcars.
Trucking the navy beans, pinto beans and black beans to three separate facilities costs North Star Bean more money than shipping them from McCanna, Enger said. Because it must remain competitive with other area edible bean companies, North Star absorbs the cost instead of passing it on to its farmer-customers in the form of lower prices, he said.
North Star Bean, formerly Northland Marketing, has been discussing track repairs with BNSF since the summer of 2000, when a 24-inch rainfall washed out three railroad bridges, Enger said. In fall 2000, BNSF indicated it planned to repair the track, but four years later, the track still can’t be used.
Though Enger wasn’t surprised when he heard this week BNSF was proposing to abandon the track, he had not given up on the track repairs and recently sent letters to the North Dakota congressional delegation about the need for them. Meanwhile, he has had discussions with BNSF officials within the past year about the feasibility of repairing the track.
“Obviously, when you have a facility, you like to ship them out of the facility because that’s your lowest cost,” he said.
Higher costs
Shipping a 1,500 hundredweight car of pinto beans from Larimore, N.D., costs $4,050 more than it would shipping from McCanna, Enger said.
Meanwhile, his plant occasionally is hit with late fees from BNSF because it can’t ship the beans on the day the railcar arrives. That sometimes happens when the area elevator handling North Star’s shipping is loading its own cars and is unable to load his company’s beans, Enger said.
He is unsure what the response of North Star L.L.C. will be to BNSF’s proposal, he said. Because sharing repair costs with BNSF would be too expensive, North Star Beans’ options include purchasing a track mobile – a rail car used to move freight cars to the main line – or finding a “short line” railroad to purchase the section of track.
Bailey covers agriculture and rural issues.