(The following story by Dennis Seid appeared on the Mississippi Daily Journal website on November 23.)
TUPELO, Miss. — To get the Mississippi-built Prius onto dealers’ lots, Toyota will rely on rail.
In fact, 80-90 percent of the completed vehicles will be shipped by rail to the more than 1,200 Toyota dealerships across the country.
The remaining Prius “will be shipped via auto carriers to more local destinations,” said Brad Jorgenson, Toyota’s national logistics manager.
But a rail line doesn’t go directly to the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi plant in Blue Springs just yet. To solve that issue, a 10,000-foot rail spur will be built, connecting the BNSF track just north of the TMMMS site. In addition, two shorter parallel lines will be built to accommodate other trains that must use the track.
“All together, we’re looking at about 23,000 feet of track that will be built,” said Chad Wages, the project/engineering manager overseeing the project for the PUL Alliance. “The spur will go a hundred feet or so onto the Toyota site, where then Toyota will build another 50,000 feet of track.”
According to Jorgenson, Toyota Logistics Services will build and oversee its rail classification yard.
The on-site yard is “designed to receive empty multilevel railcars for staging, prepping and subsequent sorting for outbound trains,” he said. “Connecting to this, running along the western boundary of the site, will be the vehicle loading tracks.”
The finished Prius will be loaded onto the railcars, then moved to the classification yard before being picked up by BNSF trains.
But the rail will be used for more than shipping Prius across the country. Raw materials also will be delivered to TMMMS via trains.
“Toyota Tsusho, the on-site steel supplier to TMMMS, will have coiled steel brought in via the TLS rail infrastructure,” Jorgenson said.
Ready by December 2009
The state, in building its 23,000 feet of track, has budgeted some $20 million for the work.
A big chunk of the expense – about $6.6 million – is for the construction of two rail bridges, which will span U.S. 78 and the frontage road.
Like much of the work that has been completed so far on the TMMMS site, the rail project will have to move along quickly, too. Even though the production schedule for manufacturing vehicles at TMMMS has been pushed back a few months, the state still is obligated to have the rail spur finished by December 2009.
“Toyota’s schedule has been shifted, but that hasn’t done anything to our schedule really,” Wages said. “Now, it does give us a little breathing room, but we still have to have it constructed in time.”
The rail spur will benefit more than Toyota, said Randy Kelley, executive director of Three Rivers Planning and Development District. The agency is the administrative body for the PUL Alliance, a group made up of officials from Pontotoc, Union and Lee counties that got together to create the Wellspring site where TMMMS now sits.
“PUL will own the rail spur, with operational and maintenance agreements with Toyota,” he said.
Ownership of the spur means PUL has control to access to the rail.
“That means that we can hook onto it, say if another industry wants to locate nearby and needs rail access,” Kelley said. “Obviously, that’s a great benefit to have. So, let’s say we need rail access to a supplier in Pontotoc County, then you’ll have it. Or maybe it’s in Chickasaw County. Having this rail in place, and having access to it is important. A lot of good things can happen.”
Jorgenson seems to think so.
“The rail infrastructure investment is designed to support the initial TMMMS production volume,” he said. “Existing TMMMS land is available for future rail expansion, if necessary.”