JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation Inc. is going for the grocers, the Florida Times-Union reported.
The railroad is in the middle of a marketing program, dubbed “Taste the Savings,” to attract food manufacturers to use rail service for shipments of their basic food ingredients. The direct-mail campaign to more than 1,200 manufacturers started last month and will continue through early November, a company news release said.
“Food manufacturers are receiving their sugar, flour, vegetable oil and corn syrup by truck to their manufacturing facilities and adding a lot of fat to the expense side of their ledgers,” said Kathy Halper, CSXT’s manager of agricultural merchandise marketing.
“Our rail service offers a diet of excellent service, quality equipment and low-calorie costs that can save manufacturers as much as 60 percent while still meeting their manufacturing requirements.”
CSXT has been targeting receivers of in-bound bulk food items that are not rail-served and educating them about CSXT’s cost savings as well as its transloading, warehousing and industrial development services.
The railroad recently announced that a major agricultural producer in California is now using CSXT to move honeydew melons to New York. It’s the first such move on CSXT in more than a decade.
“We can provide shippers an excellent service product and save them money, a lot of money,” said David Hemphill, CSXT’s assistant vice president of industrial and economic development.
To sweeten the marketing campaign, CSXT will offer a weekend at the company’s Greenbrier resort in West Virginia for a winner selected from those who respond to the direct-mail campaign.