Re: Declining oil traffic

["Ken Neate" <kenneate@tig.com.au>]

Most likely, apart from the longest hauls, the only way fuel will return to
rail is if a transport operator were to adopt roadrailer technology.  As
pointed out, by Thommo, for economic, environmental and OHS reasons the
preference is to load once and go straight to the customer which cuts out
the use of rail tank cars.

At the major (capital city) oil terminals, truck loading costs the majors
less than rail tank car loading due to truck drivers loading on a self serve
basis.

Country distributors save the cost of unloading, storing and reloading if
they use road transport.   Using rail tank cars, the cost for the long haul
by rail would have to be a fraction that for road.

Now if roadrailer technology were used the handling costs would be the same
as for road and it may become economic to use rail again.

But who wil spend the capital to make it happen?.

Ken

Thommo wrote in message ...
>
>The trend for the oil majors today is to utilise road transport as their
>prime source of cartage at the expense of rail, an example of this was a
>recent trip to Goulburn whereby rakes of retired oil wagons await their
>fate.This scene no doubt repeats itself at other major railway centres
>around Australia.
>As I am employed at a country fuel distributorship I can best explain why
>this trend is continuing on an upward spiral.  The infrastructure,
>environmental and  O.H and S costs associated with inland storage
facilities
>today is alarming impacting on the overall profit margin for a small rural
>distributorship.  Unfortunately for rail, new competitors entering the
>deregulated market  importing cheaper blends of fuel having no fixed
>infrastructure costs, the majors had to compete with these new players.
Five
>years ago our company employed 5 14.000 kl trucks for rural deliverys this
>necessitated 5 drivers 1 dispatcher 2 storeman and various admin staff, we
>had our own rail siding with 2 rail tank cars serving this 500.000 kl
>storage facility daily . Today however our depot along with many others
have
>been decommissioned and/or abandoned employing only a hand full of staff,
>with fuel being delivered to the primary producer direct from the Melbourne
>terminal utilising a B- double. Back in the early eighties the majors
>invested heavily in establishing dedicated inland storage facilities
running
>large consignments of block oil trains to service these, however all to be
>in vain.  Shell in Shepparton is the only user of rail and given its
>competitors have abandoned this source of transport one wonders it's only a
>matter of time when it too disassociates it's self from rail transport .
>
>signalling off
>Thommo
>
>