(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on The Journal of Commerce website on December 1, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Canadian National Railway is asking customers to help it line up their freight for easier train pickup by taking steps to curb railcar switching by CN while its locomotive engineers are on strike.
CN is implementing a contingency train-operations plan, under which it is using qualified managers to drive locomotives after 1,700 engineers in the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference struck the company on Nov. 28.
Shippers from one end of Canada to the other are reporting train service delays from the nation’s largest railroad. Some say ocean cargo diversions have also begun, with a few ships heading to U.S. seaports that would normally go to Canadian terminals served by CN.
CN spokesman Mark Hallman said the carrier “is encouraging its customers to help it during this labor disruption by reducing the time spent at their sites performing in-plant switching,” meaning the time that CN crews are handling railcars at a shipper location.
One industry observer said the requests CN is making of its shippers mean the railroad “is asking customers to do something they don’t normally do,” as the railroad grapples with traffic and crew staffing issues during the strike. The car switching procedures would mainly affect mixed-freight cargoes bound for multiple destinations, rather than large-volume trains such as intermodal or grain shipments.
Hallman said CN asked customers to give the carrier round-the-clock access at factory gates, thereby eliminating delays of its train crews due to locked gates.
The railroad is urging shippers to “use a track mobile or railcar mover to perform in-plant switching” of cars, Hallman said. That allows customers to line up cars for pickup without using CN’s switcher engines to move them around the plant.
CN also wants customers to arrange railcars ahead of time in blocks that are all headed to the same destination, but avoid coupling them on the shipper’s pull track. That way, a CN locomotive can come by and load the number of cars that CN decides to pull away at any one time.