Showcasing Railcars in Action: Open Top Hoppers. One of the most universal railcars in the railroad system today is the open top hopper. This railcar type contains different configurations of…
Darell LutherFebruary 28, 2023
Railcar Tracking... Critically Important When Service Is Challenging! When I started in the railroad world several decades ago, big data for railcar maintenance was collected by railroads through readers that…
Darell LutherMay 31, 2022
How can you tell the railroads are full? Cycle times increase dramatically (get longer), more trains are parked on sidings and mainline track with long delays between movements, bad order…
Darell LutherMay 10, 2022
There are several current on-going events that potentially pack a wallop for rail transportation providers. Although we won’t discuss them all, I’ve highlighted a few that we think are important…
Darell LutherApril 18, 2022
Do You Lease or Own Private Railcars? Imagine spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per month to lease or hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars…
Darell LutherMarch 14, 2022
When moving a private empty freight railcar (non-tank car), there are several options. If that private railcar moves off a loaded “revenue move” (paid, loaded move) then the return trip…
Darell LutherFebruary 1, 2022
There’s an interesting phenomenon occurring in the railcar market. There’s a bunch of railcars in storage. Most of those railcars are tank cars, covered hoppers for frac sand and coal…
Darell LutherJune 28, 2021
It seems that regardless of where you’re located in the world, you’re seeing shipments of a number of products being bogged down. When you look at, as an example, consumer…
Darell LutherJune 17, 2021
There’s an interesting phenomenon going on right now in the transportation world. All the parts, of which most are normally stable at any given time, are not stable. Turmoil may…
Darell LutherMay 27, 2021