(The following article by Phyllis Jacobs Griekspoor was posted on the Wichita Eagle website on September 27.)
WICHITA, Kansas — Harvest and hurricanes are seasonal partners. But they don’t mix particularly well.
Hundreds of loaded railcars and barges sit idly, somewhere on the Mississippi River or on rail lines near the Gulf Coast, waiting to unload cargo stalled as Hurricane Katrina, then Rita, slammed into the region.
“We have 49 percent of our total car inventory loaded somewhere right now,” said Pat Hiatte with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.
That means cars and barges are not returning to the Midwest to be reloaded. That’s straining a storage system that depends on continuous movement of grain.
Corn and grain sorghum are piling up at elevators across Kansas as the wheat that needs to move out of its way stays in silos.
“Storage was going to be tight this year anyway,” said Paul DeBruce, president of DeBruce Grain of Kansas City, which has a large terminal operation in Wichita. “All along the rail corridor, you have loaded freight trains parked and waiting. We can’t move more freight until we can unload them.”
The secondary market for rail cars, seen for the most part only in the grain industry, has soared out of reach for elevators struggling to move wheat out of the way for fall crops.
“A month ago a shuttle car could be leased for a premium of about $300 to $450,” DeBruce said. “Last week, it was $1,800.”
In many areas of Kansas, huge concrete bunkers allow corn to be piled on the ground. But it’s a risky business in much of the Kansas climate, where warm winters with rain rather than snow promote spoilage.
The ability to move the grain by truck has been hampered by soaring fuel costs that have driven many trucking companies out of business.
The good news for grain transportation is that Galveston and Houston, with their vast shipping lanes, were spared the brunt of Rita’s fury.
All rail traffic in and around Houston was embargoed as early as last Wednesday as trains were halted to wait out the storm.
BNSF had resumed some operations by Monday.
Union Pacific Railroad had 13 of its 17 subdivisions back in operation on Monday, with stations from Houston to Shreveport and Beaumont to Lake Charles, La., still out of service.
The Timber Rock Railroad in east Texas and west-central Louisiana, a shortline owned by Pittsburg-based Watco Cos., was being cleared of debris and slowly returned to service, according to a news release Monday from Watco.
At the Port of Catoosa near Tulsa, director Bob Portis said the backup of grain has been less a problem than the inability to get fertilizer upriver to customers in Kansas.
“The backup of barges waiting to unload has meant the cargo they would ordinarily bring back isn’t coming back,” Portis said.