(Union Pacific issued the following news release on November 23.)
OMAHA, Neb. — The holidays have been launched on Union Pacific Railroad as the traditional movement of Christmas trees by rail from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California is high- balling.
Union Pacific expects to carry more than 1,000 loads of Christmas trees this year.
Among those trees is one special tree from UP’s largest tree shipper, Holiday Tree Farms of Corvallis, Ore. That tree has been shipped to Omaha where it will be decorated and displayed for the first Christmas in UP’s new headquarters building, Union Pacific Center.
“Holiday Tree Farms has found intermodal transportation an efficient, dependable means of moving a very high volume of product in a limited window,” said Hal Schudel, Holiday Tree Farms owner.
The plantation-style tree farm, founded in 1955, started moving truck trailers loaded with trees on railroad flatcars in 1988. Over the past 17 years, they have moved more than 7,600 trailers loaded with more than 5 million Christmas trees.
Originally the railroad moved the trees in boxcars to Los Angeles where they were spotted for unloading by a wide variety of vendors. In recent years, the trees have been moved in intermodal truck trailers and containers primarily for large retailers.
Union Pacific Corporation owns one of America’s leading transportation companies. Its principal operating company, Union Pacific Railroad, is the largest railroad in North America, covering 23 states across the western two-thirds of the United States. A strong focus on quality and a strategically advantageous route structure enable the company to serve customers in critical and fast growing markets. It is a leading carrier of low-sulfur coal used in electrical power generation and has broad coverage of the large chemical-producing areas along the Gulf Coast. With competitive long-haul routes between all major West Coast ports and eastern gateways, and as the only railroad to serve all six major gateways to Mexico, Union Pacific has the premier rail franchise in North America.