RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

I’m not sure how many visitors follow the National Journal’s Transportation Experts Blog using the RSS feed in the right sidebar but there’s an interesting new topic being discussed this week – How Can We Help Freight Move?

The issue caught my attention because of the moderator’s introductory comment noting “that economic forecasts show the freight volumes handled by America’s ports, roads, rails’ and waterways will be 70 percent greater in 2020 than they were in 1998”.

Considering the current economic mess, that’s good news if you’re in transportation. But there seems to be a conspicuous absence of comments (so far) from the trucking side of the industry. Not surprising is that much of the discussion (so far) is slanted toward the use of rail.

Many large and small businesses involved in first, second and third proviso relocations abhor the notion of using trains to move their customers’ valuables. It’s a 40 year-old aversion that developed when the moving industry unsuccessfully tried to use antiquated trailer-on-flat car (TOFC) resources to move household goods in high density traffic corridors.

Granted, some of the damage claims were astronomical but not necessarily because of the method of transport. It was due more to the lack of foresight and understanding of the difference in the handling requirements when moving used household goods via rail, and the use of proper materials and manpower training industry wide.

Several national van lines made successful inroads in the ’80 using specially modified trailers in dedicated container-on-flat car (COFC) double stack intermodal networks. Unfortunately their interest quickly waned when the moving industry found itself with a glut of over-the-road capacity during a particularly long competitive period when most customers shopped for (or were promised) single source responsibility from their relocation provider.

Now that some of the larger carriers have dabbled with double stack intermodal service and the more recent use of portable/mobile shipping containers, it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not the household goods moving industry will be willing to adapt their methods of doing business to operate within the frameworks of the new transportation infrastructures being discussed.