Onion World: The Voice of the Onion Industry

New Train Speeds Onions Coast to Coast

Onion World
November 2007

In May of 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, Leland Stanford hammered home the golden spike that marked the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in the nation’s first ranscontinental
railroad.

Today, a new train system promises to bring similar breakthrough transportation to onion and other produce growers as well as a nation seeking new ways to manage its energy resources.

Cross the Continent in Three Days
“It’s a new kind of logistics platform,” says Paul Esposito, vice president of Railex LLC, a unique unit train system linking its own huge East and West Coast terminals. Loaded with produce headed for distant markets, Railex refrigerated cars cross the continent in as little as three days—with a cold chain uninterrupted from start to destination.

Esposito explained that, “by railroad definition, a unit train has no additional work events between its origination and its destination.”

Neither cars nor other loads are added to or subtracted from the train while en route. Each of the two Railex terminals—one in Wallula, Wash., in the West and the other in Rotterdam, N.Y.—are designed to hold two entire trains simultaneously and transload product from refrigerated trucks through an in-terminal system of six cool rooms. Each of the 212,000-square-foot terminal warehouses is nearly
1,500 feet long and boasts a two-and-a-half mile loop of railroad track inside the world’s fi rst refrigerated warehouses built to take on a train.

Onions get the red carpet treatment: “When we developed the two large temperature controlled onion coolers in the Washington state terminal, onion shippers helped us design a cooler they would be comfortable with moving their product,” Esposito says. “On the East Coast, two rack-tiered coolers receive the onions. Temperature control rooms in Washington are not racked because onions don’t stay there for a long period of time. However, our program does offer seven days of storage built into the cost, so shippers can ‘forward deploy’ their inventory on the East Coast, shipping it out to meet local and regional demand throughout the week without additional warehousing cost.”

“Most of those onions are elevated on racks,” he told us. “Onions in the freight cars ride on racks, so air circulates underneath and through their pallets that allow us to load the car quicker, while securing the onions for a better ride. No pallet sits on top of another—there’s a 6- to 8-inch air space between so fresh air fl ow and exchange are phenomenal. We hauled red and white onions this year and Sweet Clover’s northern sweet onions that compete against the Peruvian sweets. Shippers felt very comfortable with our handling and environmental control systems. They also appreciated our assisting them expand their distribution into the Northeast.”

A Model of Well-planned Logistics
The Railex process is a model of wellplanned logistics. The scenario begins at the Wallula facility, where Union Pacific drops off an empty train. The 64-foot refrigerated cars are state-of-the-art equipment featuring Intelliset Star Track GPS units for tracking, monitoring and control capability. The two-way satellite system makes it possible to turn units on or off remotely and to know any car’s location at any time within one mile.

Product arriving in refrigerated trucks is offl oaded on interior temperature-controlled loading docks. The loaded train, which may carry onions, apples, potatoes, pears and more, is normally comprised of 55 cars that carry the equivalent of 200 truckloads of produce. Designed for transloading from trucks to train, the Washington facility was planned for handling speed and loads 19 railcars at a time. When the train arrives in Chicago, the Union Pacific crew turns it over to CSX Transportation personnel for the rest of the trip. At the destination end, in Rotterdam, 14 cars are unloaded at a time, most into cold storage where it will be available for cost effi cient “just in time” ordering as needed during the week by buyers ranging from terminal markets to A&J Produce to Wal-Mart.

The Railex system is the brainchild of Andy Pollak, creator of Andrew and Sons, a leading provider of fresh produce—especially potatoes, citrus fruits and onions—to the largest grocery retailers on the East Coast. Pollak’s logistical practices established his leadership in reducing inbound freight cost by utilizing and managing conventional rail services and led to the creation of Railex as a more costeffective alternative to both conventional rail and truck transport. Today, ADS Management, an Andrew and Sons company, purchases up to 1,500 railcars a year. The entire Railex platform represents an investment of just under $50 million.

Major Expansion Planned
When FLAVOR interviewed Esposito in May, Railex was only 28 weeks old, but already had clear long- and short-term expansion plans. “We now run only one train a week. Our fi rst expansion will be to get two trains a week out of the Pacifi c Northwest and begin running inventory back.

We’re already running four to fi ve cars a week that are returning fi lled to the Pacific Northwest. We have plans to expand into California and into the southeastern United States—Northern Florida and the Memphis area. Within the next fi ve years we plan to be running unit trains from all four corners of U.S. and the center of the U.S., servicing every area of the country with product.”

Railex is looking at international trade opportunities as well. “We’re going to work with eastern and western ports and will be seeking vessel access in ports where we can shoot their product across the country by unit train,” Esposito explains. “For example, Chilean fruit that needs to get to the Pacific Northwest typically comes through an eastern port in Wilmington or New Jersey—we’re picking
it up at the port, bringing it to our Rotterdam facility and shooting it to the Northwest on a Railex unit train.

Beyond obvious time and handling advantages, some of the most compelling arguments for Railex, according to Esposito, are fuel cost and energy and resource savings.

“These high speed unit train links save 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel consumption over trucking per train per week,” he says. “By converting those 200 trucks to one train, the country saves over 5 million
gallons a year and CO2 savings are the equivalent of 85,000 metric tons a year for each train. With that in mind, the EPA has granted us a Smart Way transport partnership that we are very proud of.”

Saving time, quality, money and national resources and opening new markets—all are good reasons for onion growers and the rest of the produce industry to take a long serious look at Railex. It’s headed your way. All abo-o-o-ard!

Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Flavor, Nunhems’ Summer 2007 issue.

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