Intermodal terminal moves the freight down the line

QUINCY - Making money in the potato, apple, cherry or onion business is a matter of getting the produce to the customer at a price that doesn't force that customer to hock his (or her) house to pay for it. For Washington growers and farmers it's easy when the customer is in Seattle, or even Los Angeles, but a little tougher when she (or he) is in New York or Pittsburgh.

Trucks can haul it, of course, but truck fuel can be spendy, Pat Boss, public affairs consultant for the Port of Quincy, said. Train transport can be more economical, but transferring produce from truck to train back to truck to store can increase the chances of bruising, Boss said.

What if somebody figured out how to take a fully loaded truck container and load it on a train, ship it to the destination, unload it and hook it back up to a truck for final delivery? Brilliant. It would take advantage of lower transportation costs and reduce handling of the cargo at the same time.

Refrigerate the containers, and it would be possible to ship fruit and vegetables anywhere in the country. Brilliant.

Actually that is brilliant. So brilliant somebody thought of it a long time ago. Grant County-Quincy area folks put the insight to work at the Intermodal Terminal.

Of course, a fully loaded container is heavy. Very heavy. There are machines to help with the heavy lifting.

Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad operates the trains running through the depot, and the Cold Train company owns the containers. The port crew does the loading. "It's a partnership," Boss said.

The loading crew can handle 20- or 40-foot containers, Nick Parker, business development coordinator for the port, said. The crew has its choice of a loader that picks up the container like a giant forklift. Then there's the Taylor, named for its manufacturer.

"Technically it's called an overhead reach stacker," Parker explained.

The stacker picks up the container from the top. There's a depression at each end of the container, and - all things being computerized - sensors to help the driver find the right spot. "Line up the pins and lock it," Feranando Ruiz, of Quincy, said. Ruiz has been loading containers for about a year, he said.

So. Drive through a bumpy commercial yard with a fully loaded container swinging from the front of the vehicle. Not that difficult, Ruiz said, as long as the driver goes slow. Last winter being pretty mild, he's never driven the snow, he said, and that's the next challenge.

It sounds pretty simple, pick up the container and set it on the train car, not quite a flatbed, with a shallow depression to hold the bottom container. But containers require careful handling. "For as huge as they are, and the weight that they carry, they're pretty fragile," Parker said.

The containers are moved around the yard with a truck called a yard goat. "That's the funny-looking truck," Parker said.

The port yard is right next to the BNSF tracks, and the goal is that the train will roll up to the line of parked rail cars, hook them up and go, without a lot of back-and-forth or wasted time. That's where the shuttlewagon comes in.

It's a dual vehicle, with wheels for the shop yard and rails for the track, so it can move cars into the right position. The control panel is impressive. "My first time ever (trying to drive it), I looked at the controls and I'm like, 'what the - ?'" Ruiz said. It's not that hard once the operator gets used to it, he said.

The rail car brakes have to be working before they go anywhere. "You've got to fill them up with air. Every single car," Jonathan Cuevas said, That's crucial, since once they start moving the shuttlewagon can't stop them. "Well you can, it's just really messy," Parker said.

There's one outbound train and one inbound train per day, Parker said. The loads leaving Quincy are overwhelmingly agricultural. "Now what comes back is a whole different story," Parker said.

What comes back in a refrigerator car is frozen pizza, Boss said, "all kinds of ice cream," frozen food from Midwestern processors. And some pretty sweet loads. "A lot of candy comes from the Midwest," Boss said.

The intermodal yard is busy but it could be busier, Parker said. "We are nowhere near our capacity as far as traffic."