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The Pressroom

All aboard! Railex LLC’s train has come in

Joel Gebet -- http://theproducenews.com/ -- November 14, 2006

ROTTERDAM, NY — It is a scene reminiscent of terminal markets of old but on a scale that would probably have been unimaginable, until now.
Among the hustle and bustle on the loading dock area of Railex LLC’s new terminal, here, fresh produce is unloaded from a string of white boxcars that stretch 1,100 feet, or just over a fifth of a mile.
Paul Esposito, Railex’s senior vice president of sales and logistics, had a large smile on his face when he spoke with The Produce News about the new facility, a multi-million dollar terminal that the company, a division of ADS Management LLC, recently placed into operation.
“It’s like no other; it’s amazing,” Mr. Esposito said Nov. 6 of the 212,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art transload facility, which had just received its third 55-car unit train from the company’s other facility, which is located in Wallula, WA.
The mile-long train, which consists of 55 new, 64-foot ARMN railcars that are equipped with fresh-air exchange, global positioning system tracking and temperature control, are unloaded 14 cars at a time inside the cooled facility, which preserves the cold chain, Mr. Esposito said.
“We are moving about 150,000 cases a week and should be up to 180,000 by the end of the year,” he said of the commodities Railex is carrying, which are mostly apples, onions, pears and potatoes from several Washington state growers. “We are building toward a second train by mid-2007.”
Mr. Esposito said that the trains, which have been hauling between 180 and 200 truckloads each, have been coming in even earlier than expected. That bodes well for the company, which guarantees fifth-day arrivals.
According to Railex’s web site, railexusa.com, the unit train, which is moved across the country by the Union Pacific Railroad and CSX Transportation, will always remain intact, which will avoid shifting of products and potential time delays. The train, which is loaded in 36 hours, departs Washington state on Thursday and arrives in New York on Tuesday, where it is unloaded in 24 hours and sent back to Wallula.
Since there are 110 cars in the system, while the first train is on its way back, another train will be departing Washington to start the process all over again.
“Railex opens up a transportation lane that converts long-haul to the rail system,” he said. “We are not reinventing the wheel. The automobile, coal and grain industries use it now and quite successfully.”
The building has 38 truck doors, contains 12 temperature-controlled coolers, houses a 65,000-square-foot packing facility that will allow Railex to offer repacking and regrading, and the facilities to house 400 racked truckloads, allowing customers to “forward position” their inventories, manage them more efficiently and provide just-in-time deliveries.
One of Railex’s major clients, Stemilt Growers Inc., has even placed a distribution representative at Railex’s Rotterdam facility to coordinate the forward positioning of its products, Mr. Esposito noted.
“Stemilt saw the vision early on,” he said, adding that Railex is in talks with “a couple of other companies” about having representatives stationed in Rotterdam.
In addition to growers, Mr. Esposito said that Railex’s clients include retailers that run the gamut from large national chains to smaller regional chains such as the Golub Corp., which operates Price Chopper, and Hannaford Bros. Co.
“Our distribution radius is huge,” he said, noting that it has delivered to clients as far south as Atlanta, as far west as Kentucky and Ohio, and as far north as Montreal.
Mr. Esposito added that there would also be backhaul opportunities for the westbound train that would not be limited to just perishables. Railex is also exploring the possibility of future expansion in other areas of the country.
“There are so many opportunities,” he said, noting that the firm is investigating potential sites in the Midwest and southern United States as well as in California.
Mr. Esposito was quick to point out that Railex has been a success due in part to “the operations folks, who have been amazing through the entire process. We have had a lot of great communications between everyone involved to be able to do what we’ve been able to do.”

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