Getting full visibility of railcar shipments in Steelroads

If you are getting incomplete CLM (aka sightings) data for some of your shipments and you use Steelroads*, here are some ideas that will help you increase your visibility.

1. All CLM data delivered out of Steelroads is now restricted to “Party to Waybill” (PTW) security. This means that your company must be listed on the waybill (shipper, consignee, care of, freight payer, etc.) in order for Steelroads to deliver the data. Otherwise, Steelroads returns “Not authorized to view shipment” for each railcar where your company is not listed on the waybill. It is common for company names to vary slightly on the waybill, which is enough to not match the security filter or “parameters” in Steelroads. If you are receiving a “Not authorized to view shipment” notification for a railcar, check the waybill/bill of lading. If the spelling of your company varies from other waybills for railcars where you are getting CLMs, send the spelling variation and your Steelroads user ID to csc@railinc.com. Request them to add the spelling variation to the “parameters” for your ID. Ideally, you and your trading partners should use CIF (Customer Information/Identification File) numbers to identify parties on the bill of lading. The CIF number is a unique identification code for each location of a transportation carrier customer. If the CIF number is used, the spelling of the company doesn’t matter.

2. This may sound obvious, but if you are using a Steelroads trace list for your “permanent” (leased or owned) railcars along with the New Event option, which I recommend, you need to be sure that when railcars are added to your permanent fleet they are also added to the Steelroads trace list. NOTE: if you are using the scripted access option, you may have a maximum of 1,000 railcars in the trace list.

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A word from the sponsor

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3. Make sure no one else is running the trace list that is using the New Event option. This will, in essence, empty the mailbox and you will not get complete history for your railcars. When you save the trace list, there is an option to set it to Private. This will make the trace list invisible to other user accounts within your company. Of course, if you share one user account, it will be visible even though it is marked private.

The New Event option is a trace list setting that essentially turns the trace list into a mail box that accumulates up to 4 days of sighting events.

However, if you have an existing trace list and you add a railcar to it, you will not see any CLMs for this railcar until the next sighting event dated AFTER the date/time the trace list was last run. If you must get the last 4 days of history for the railcar, you can create a new trace list, add the railcar, select the New Event response option, save and run the trace list. By default, a new trace list returns the last 4 days of history when the New Event option is selected.

4. If a railcar has not moved in more than 6 months, Steelroads will return “No data”.

I hope that you have found this useful. If you have any other helpful hints to add regarding Steelroads, please comment!

All the best,

Jim

*Steelroads is a product and trademark of Railinc Corporation and is not affiliated with this blog or Railcar Tracking Company.

Optimizing railcar fleets by reducing excess detention

By taking some time to manage the excess time customers take to unload your railcars (i.e. detention), you will be well on your way to optimizing your railcar fleet. In this article, I will share ideas about how to determine a reasonable grace period, the best way to measure detention time, and how much to charge for days beyond the grace period.

Detention is often used interchangeably with demurrage and vice versa. One definition of demurrage goes like this: “…the charge on detention of [railcars]…to encourage speedy unloading and return of empties to improve utilization of [railcars].” Demurrage is the result / cost of too much detention. So if you want to increase the utilization of railcars, reducing excess detention is a great place to start.

How can excess detention be reduced? If you have been shipping via rail for a while, you are familiar with railroad demurrage (aka private railcar storage) charges. These charges get your attention right? I’m not advocating that you just send an invoice to your customers or the parties that unload your railcars because raising the blood pressure of your customers and partners may not be the best way to preserve and win business. However, mimicking how the railroads manage detention of their railcars will work well for you too.

For an article that discusses the basics of railroad demurrage, go here.

One of the shippers I work with gives their customers a 14 day grace period to unload the railcar and get it back to the railroad empty or face a $75 charge for each day beyond the 14 day grace period. What I really like about how they manage detention is that they give the excess detention report to their sales people first. The sales people share the report with the customer and use it as a basis for a discussion about getting the railcars back in a more timely fashion. This gives the customer an opportunity express ideas about special circumstances that may have caused the extensive detention. It is then up to the sales person, who is the the manager of the account, to make the call on what specific charges to eliminate, reduce and maintain unchanged. This process also gives you and your customer a chance to learn more about working together harmoniously and ideally eliminating excess detention through a better understanding of each other’s processes.

How do you determine the grace period (i.e. the time allowed for unloading railcars) before charges are levied? It depends. Here are a few ways to determine it if you are drawing a blank:

1. Look at past performance. How long on average is it taking your customers to unload? You may also want to consider using the median, which is the number where 50% of the detention measurements are above and 50% are below.
2. Talk to your sales people and have them talk to your customers (or have your sales people talk to them) to see what they think is reasonable.
3. Let your demand forecast, loaded transit time, empty transit time, loading time and fleet size constraints determine it. For example, you may not be able to add any railcars to your fleet until next year and this year your largest customer wants to increase their orders. Something has got to give and getting the railroads to reduce load and empty transit time may be difficult. To read more about how to use a simple formula to size your railcar fleet based on forecasted demand go here. Rearrange the formula a little to solve for the unloading (referred to as layover in the formula) time required with a static (non-changing) count of railcars. You can use the results as as leverage to get the customer to unload faster. Most companies respect management by data these days and they will appreciate the time you have taken to thoroughly analyze the situation before asking them for something.

If you are still not sure, draw the initial line somewhere based on your gut instinct. Then based on feedback from your customers, you can decide to adjust it later.

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A word from the sponsor

Keeping track of and preparing reports showing how long it is taking railcars to get unloaded and the demurrage required for excess detention can be time consuming and tedious work as your railcar fleet grows. If you would like some help with a cost effective, easy to use and powerful system designed to do just this, contact Railcar Tracking Company.

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How is the detention time measured? Typically from actual placement (when the railcar is delivered by the railroad to the spot requested by the unloading party / customer) of the load to release of the empty railcar back to the railroad. The exception to this is if the unloading party was not able to accept the railcar from the railroad when the railroad wanted to deliver it, so the railroad reports a constructive placement sighting event. In this case, the detention time should begin at constructive placement. Of course, if the railroad delivered a bunch of railcars a couple days late and then another bunch arrived on-time on the same day – you might decide to give the customer a break in this situation. To keep things simple, charge whole days only and start the measurement at 12:01am the day after the constructive or actual placement (whichever comes first). Most railroads measure this way as well, so it will be easier for your customer to understand. Demurrage is charged for the detention days beyond the grace period. 

How much should you charge for each day beyond the grace period? At least charge an amount that will cover your daily cost of a railcar. If you take into consideration railcar purchase, tax, lease, repair, test, and clean fees you should be able to get pretty close.

I hope this article has given you some ideas about how to optimize your railcar fleet by reducing excess detention through the assessment of demurrage. If you have other ideas that you would like to add, please comment and start the conversation!

All the best,

Jim

Cost increases coming soon for rail shipment tracking data?

Most Class I railroads have a practice of providing shipment tracking data such as CLM (car location messages) and waybills (EDI 417 format) to those directly involved in rail shipping for no charge. The practice of doing the same for third parties (VANs – value added networks, on-demand software vendors) seemed to be same, but the policy of providing them for no charge was not as clear (at least to me). Recently, data provided to third parties has come under more scrutiny with charges being levied by at least one Class I and possibly more to follow. This change in practice may cause prices for many systems that rely on this data to rise. In this article, I am going to outline how this might affect you and what you can do to minimize its impact.

First of all, let’s clarify what is considered directly involved in rail shipping? If you are party to the waybill (sometimes referred to as PTW) you are considered directly involved. So if you are listed as a shipper, consignee, or freight payer, Class I railroads consider you party to the waybill. My understanding has been that those companies that were party to the waybill would not be charged for data as long as it went directly to them. If the data was sent initially to a third party and then sent to them, the third party could be charged… but often was not.

So how might you be affected?

If you get data from a third party, you may experience increased data costs. What are the options?

1. Contact your existing third party and inquire if they have recently contacted the railroads and are confident of their costs. If you are going to need this data long term, see if you can get a price lock for at least a year if you don’t have one already.
2. Shop around. Check with other third party data providers to see if they are less expensive. Be sure to check that they have recently contacted the railroads and have a clear understanding of their relationship and the related charges before making a switch. Contact me for a list of third party data providers. The sponsorof this blog is one.
3. Get the data directly from the railroads. Refer to this articlefor specific instructions on how to request waybill data from the railroads (if you need CLM data, just add that to the request). The article will also help you gauge whether this is an appropriate choice for your company. You can establish this direct data feed and then test it against the data you are getting from the third party. When you are confident that it is accurate and complete, then turn off the third party data feed. If you find this process time consuming and difficult, you are not alone. The up front effort can be significant, but usually once the data feed is established, much less time and effort is required. If you don’t have time or feel technically inadequate to take this on, hire a consultant to help.
4. Try a mixed approach. Get the data directly from just a few railroads that handle most of your traffic. Then get the rest from a third party. Note, there are some third parties that have the ability to set the data feed to get data from virtually all of the railroads (over 530) in North America except the ones that you are getting data directly from.

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A word from the sponsor

If you would like assistance getting data directly from the railroads, contact Railcar Tracking Company, which offers expertise, on-premise and hybrid solutions that make it much easier to acquire data directly from railroads.

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If you are a user of an on-demand (i.e. hosted by a third party) rail shipment tracking system, you may be seeing price increases in the near future. Call your vendor and ask them if they have contacted the railroads recently and if they expect prices to increase due to charges levied by the railroads. If you determine that prices are going to increase, explore these things:

1. Shop around. Check with other on-demand systems to see how their prices compare. Be sure that they have contacted the railroads recently are confident of their cost structure. Consider at least a one-year price lock.
2. Ask the vendor if the system can be installed on-premise(i.e. your own computers) and if they will support it that way. The system will need to have a way of connecting directly to the railroads and third party data providers otherwise there is no reason to even consider this. You will need to consider the trade offs of supporting software on-premise vs. increased costs of the on-demand system.
3. Install the system on a private cloud that is purchased (usually a monthly subscription) by your company, but accessible by the software vendor as well, so it is isolated and easier to support and update. The data will still need to go directly to this system from the railroads. This is a hybrid of on-premise and on-demand.
4. Consider systems that have the ability to install on-premise or on a private cloud and can get data directly from the railroads and third parties (if needed). The sponsor of this blog offers such a system.

I hope you have found this article useful by alerting you to something that deserves further investigation and by providing you with options if it turns out that you will be affected. I will keep this article updated as more information becomes available. If you have information to share, please comment!

All the best,

Jim

Railcar Repair: Save $600 Or More Annually By Reading This Article

If you pay for railcar repair bills, I’m going to show you how to save a minimum of $600 each year. Starting January 1, 2012, Railinc will begin charging $600 annually for the PDF print out of [rail]car repair billing charges (CRBX Data Exchange) to billed parties. The charge is actually per each profile ID, so if your company has multiple IDs, you will see multiple $600 charges. Plus, third party companies wishing to receive the PDF report on behalf of customers must contact Railinc for a quote. Finally, if a company asks a billing party for a printed detail repair invoice, the billing party may charge a $150.00 per invoice fee per AAR (Association of American Railroads) Office Manual Rule 113.1.d.

There is a text file that lists all of the repairs and charges that is provided for no additional charge, but this “500 byte file” is pretty difficult to read not only by humans, but also by computers. Different types of records are blended in the same file making it extremely hard to work with. Recently, I came across a free tool that imports the 500 byte file and prints it out in a user friendly fashion. How do I get that you ask? Keep reading…

The tool and my thoughts about it

The tool is Invoice21 by RailTech Software Systems. Installing the tool is a multi-step process and is a bit more involved than your typical software install, but if you follow the instructions exactly, you shouldn’t have a problem and will be using the tool within 30 minutes or less. If you do run into a problem, RailTech will offer help for no charge – how to get in touch with them is very clear on their website. After installing the tool, I imported a fairly large monthly file (1,024 records) in only 20 seconds. Invoice21 will save one month’s worth of data. It will erase the prior month before importing a new month. If you want to maintain more history, you will need to look at the Rail21 system, which requires a license fee that is listed on the RailTech website. There are four reports provided by Invoice21 plus an error report. There was one error in my file and I was impressed with the tool’s ability to pinpoint the location of the error. The other reports show 1) invoices only 2) each repair (billing repair card) by railcar and its cost 3) repairs by shop and 4) repairs that were done in groups. Invoice21 does not provide the ability to export your reports directly to PDF. For that you will need to have a utility that enables you to print-to-PDF. There are several of these available for free such as PrimoPDF.

How to get and install the tool

Go to http://railsoft.comand click on the Invoice21 link as shown below:

You will be taken to a page where you can read about the Invoice21 product. Click on the Updates link in the third paragraph or on the left side of the page. This will take you to the Updates and Upgrades page; click on the 32 Bit Runtime Engine Build 2181 link as shown below.

Click Run when prompted. If it looks like nothing is happening, minimize the browser window and you will see the install program running – just follow the instructions given. This will install the database engine that powers the application. Once the engine is installed, open your computer’s Control Panel and open the BDE Administrator.

Using Windows XP, I was able to find the icon for the BDE Administrator easily in the Control Panel list of icons, but with Windows 7 I couldn’t find it. To run it, I clicked on my computer’s Start button and then typed “bde” in the Search text box. The icon appeared on the menu and I simply clicked it to launch the program as shown below.

Once you have the BDE Administrator open, click on the Configuration tab next to the Databases tab. Click on Drivers then Native then DBASE. On the right you will see a line for Level. Change the setting from 7 to 5, then click on the next line to set it. Now exit the screen. The system will ask if you want to save it, state Yes. You are now ready to install Invoice21.

Create a new folder on your desktop called Invoice21.

Go back to your web browser and you should be looking at the Updates and Upgrades page; on the left click the Invoice21 link – it will take you to the Invoice21 Updates and Upgrades page.

In the middle of this page, you will see a link for the invoice21.zip file – click on this link and save the invoice21.zip file in the Invoice21 folder that you just created.

Open the folder and right click on the invoice21.zip file and select Extract All. A new folder within the folder you created will be created that holds the program files.

How to use the tool

To start the program, open the Invoice21 folder and double-click on the Inv21.exe file and click Run if prompted with a security warning. It will prompt you for a key. Email information@railsoft.com for a key. The folks at RailTech Software Systems say that there are no strings attached to the software, it is totally FREE and they won’t spam you.

Once you have started the program and entered the key, you will want to import a 500 byte file. To do this, click on the Utilities > Import 500 Byte Data Exchange menu.

After the file is imported, run your reports by clicking on the Reports menu.

The report will display (this is the Detail BRC’s report):

To print the report to PDF, you will first need to install a print-to-PDF utility (PrimoPDF) and set it as the Default printer in Windows. You MUST do this because Invoice21 doesn’t give you the ability to choose a printer; when you click on the Print Report button, it automatically routes the report to the Windows default printer.

That’s it. Something that won’t take you more than a Friday afternoon to master, will save your company $600 or more each year! These days, that is not too shabby. If this benefitted you, subscribe to this blog to get notifications of when new articles are posted and forward a link to a friend. Please leave a comment and let me know how Invoice21 worked for you.

All the best,

Jim

The misunderstood Train ID field

The Train ID field may be getting less respect than it deserves because it seems inconsistent. Actually, if it were understood better, we would realize that this little field is actually providing some pretty rich information. Most Car Location Message (CLM) formats contain a Train ID field. This field returns several very different types of information depending on the situation. Frustrating and difficult to implement in systems? Yes. Useful? Yes again. In this article, I am going to explain the things other than the ID number of a train that Train ID may display and in what situations this happens.

Normal

The Train ID field is 6 characters wide. Typically it displays a train identifier like this:

QNPSKP

Railcar is Bad Ordered

In this situation, where the railcar is damaged and cannot continue its trip until fixed (i.e. the sighting code is B or F:  B = bad ordered railcar; F = bad ordered flatcar), the Train ID field displays something like this:   

J 099

The first two characters are reserved for the code that describes the general type or general area of problem. The third character is always left blank (for now). The fourth, fifth and sixth characters display the number of hours expected before the railcar is fixed and released.

Based on significant research* the number of hours to release is most often 099, which means that the railroads do not know. Also, I’ve noticed that few short line railroads and Mexican railroads provide the code and estimated hours to release.

Here is a list of the bad order codes:

Code	Classification	Description
A	Body	Including floors, roof, sides, ends and multi-level rack.
B	Braking System	Any brake component listed in Rule 83**, Car Part Codes, under the headings of Brake Equipment and/or Piping.
C	Clean-Out	Including preparation for loading such as clean-out, conditioning and/or pre-tripping, but excluding mechanical refrigeration equipment.
D	Derailment/Accident	Derailment/Accident Damage resulting from derailment, sideswipe, fire, flood or other casualty.
E	Doors	Doors Including side, end and hopper doors, outlet gates, hatch and dome covers.
F	Draft System	Draft System Including couplers, yokes, draft gears, draft lugs, draft sills, EOC and COC cushioning units and articulated connections.
G	Interior Linings & Coatings	Interior Linings & Including any interior lining or coating.
H	Load	Load Requiring measurement, weighing, adjustment, transfer or containment of leaking commodity.
I	Load Restraining Devices	Load Restraining Devices Components integral to car such as tie down equipment, interior bulkheads, DF equipment, trailer hitches, container pedestals or other similar equipment.
J	Mechanical Inspection	Mechanical Inspection Including inspection resulting from Early Warning letters, Maintenance Advisory notifications or special instructions received from car owners or handing line.
K	Refrigeration Equipment	Refrigeration Equipment Including inspection, pre-tripping and defective equipment listed in Rule 83, Car Part Codes, under the heading Mechanical Refrigeration Equipment.
L	Safety Appliances	Safety Appliances Including handholds, sill steps, ladders, running boards, crossover boards, brake steps and uncoupling levers.
M	Trucks	Trucks Including side frames, truck bolsters, friction castings, springs, snubbers and side bearings, but excludes wheel assemblies and brake rigging.
N	Underframe	Underframe Including center sills, side sills and body bolsters,crossbearers, crossties, body center plates and body side bearings.
O	Wheel Assembly	Wheel Assembly Including wheels axles, friction or roller bearings, wedges, adapters, periodic attention and hot boxes.

 

Railcar is Held or Delayed

When the railcar is held or delayed (i.e. sighting code is H), the Train ID field displays something like this:

NB 099

The first two characters are reserved for the code that describes the type of hold / delay. The third character is always left blank (for now). The fourth, fifth and sixth characters display the number of hours expected before the railcar is released from hold or delay.

Here is a list of the delay codes:

Code	Description
CC	Customs
CW	Equipment In Wrecked Train
DI	Disposition
EM	Embargo
HI	Heating and Icing
LI	Inspection-Lading
MI	Inspection-Mechanical
NB	No Bill
OC	Operating Conditions
OI	Other
WG	Weighing

 

Railcar is in the Shop for Repair or Maintenance (non – Bad Order)

In this situation, the first four characters display:

SHOP

That’s it. The sighting event code is usually J – Interchange Delivery for when the railcar is delivered to the shop and R – Interchange Receipt when the railcar is received from the shop.

Hopefully this article has been helpful by showing you how the Train ID field has multiple functions. Perhaps you can now train your systems to watch out for these situations and glean the extra information provided to better manage your railcar shipments and fleets. If you have some personal experience that can be added, please comment!

All the best,

Jim

 

* Thanks to Charles Paye at Railinc who reviewed their CLM database that receives data from over 550 railroads in North America and stores history from January 2006 to present. Railcar Tracking Company is a reseller of this data, which enables you to pay for only the data you need with no minimum monthly commitments. Railcar Tracking Company also offers Railcar Management System (RMS) which is a cost effective railcar shipment tracking and fleet management system designed to help automate many of the daily tasks required to manage rail shipments and/or railcar fleets.

** Rule 83 is described in a chapter in the Field Manual of the AAR Interchange Rules, which may be ordered from www.aar.com.

Bad order and hold/delay codes included by permission from AAR/Railinc.

Simple Railcar Fleet Sizing

Sometimes something can be so complex, it never gets  used. There are more complex and more accurate ways to size your railcar fleet, but here is a simple way that even the most modest thinker (me) can understand. Before you use this, be sure to test it in a small situation to be sure that it works for your particular situation.

1. Determine the OD (origin/destination) Pairs (load and empty return) that are used by this fleet.
2. Get the average Transit Days and average Layover Days (days to load or unload) for each OD Pair. Use a historical period that is long enough so that you have at least 30 shipments for each OD Pair. Of course, if you don’t have that much volume, work with what you have – it is better than nothing right?.  Be sure that the average transit days and layover days do not contain measurements of railcar cycles that had special, extreme delays (i.e. Bad Orders, Hold, derailment, etc.). If this is a new route, you will have to estimate. You can call a few railroads and ask them what kind of transit time they can offer for the route to help your estimation. Warning: shameless plug – getting these averages would be very easy if you were using a rail shipment tracking system like this one.
3. Record the average Transit Days + Layover Days for each load and empty OD Pair used by the fleet.
4. Determine your forecasted average daily loads required for the busiest three month period for each particular load OD Pair. This is calculated by dividing the number of loads forecasted out of an origin to a particular destination for the three month period and dividing it by 90.
5. Then for each load OD Pair, take the forecasted loads and multiply it by the average Transit Days + Layover Days for that OD Pair, this will give you loaded railcar days.
6. For each empty OD Pair, take the forecasted loads and multiply it by the average Transit Days + Layover Days, this will give you empty railcar days.
7. Add the loaded railcar days to the empty railcar days and this will give you an estimate of the fleet size required for this pool.

For example, a pool called the Decatur pool is comprised of tank cars that are shipped out of Decatur, IL (the plant location) to Buffalo, NY (Customer A) and to Old Fort, OH (Customer B).

Decatur to Buffalo (load) transit days + layover days = 6

Decatur to Old Fort (load) transit days + layover days = 5

Buffalo to Decatur (empty return) transit days + layover days = 8

Old Fort to Decatur (empty return) transit days + layover days = 7

Forecasted daily loads out of Decatur to Buffalo = 15 and Decatur to Old Fort = 10

Railcar days for loads = 15*6 + 10*5 = 90 + 50 = 140

Railcar days for empties = 15*8 + 10*7 = 120 + 70 = 190

Total railcar days = 230

Fleet estimate = 230 railcars

 

TIP: You may wish to divide the forecasted loads for the prior year and compare that with the actual number of loads that were shipped and assign that factor to your fleet size calculation.

The formula in this post is from an article entitled “Determining Rail Fleet Sizes for Shipping Automobiles” by Hanif D. Sherali and Lawrence W. Maguire. Interfaces, Vol. 30, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 2000), pp. 80-90. http://www.jstor.org/pss/25062655 (you will need to purchase the article to read it in its entirety). In this article, it describes the Static Model of fleet sizing, which is what my post uses. Further in the article, a Dynamic Model is proposed that is supposed to handle real world scenarios and day to day variations better, but it is complex. If you are interested in researching the Dynamic Model further, and are good at math, I recommend that you purchase this article.

I hope that you have found this helpful. If you have some related suggestions or tips from your personal experience, please post them!

All the best,

Jim

Get electronic waybills from railroads for railcar tracking

In this post, I’m going to share with you how and why to get electronic waybills directly from the railroads along with some tools, links and information to help you do it more easily.

Electronic waybills are delivered in a file and the information is formatted in a standard way enabling computer systems to automatically import them. Coupling sighting (CLM) data with waybill data (aka shipping instructions) can be a powerful combination. For example, not only will you know where your railcars are and what station they are destined to, you will know what customer they are going to and what product they are carrying and many other helpful pieces of information about the shipment. If you receive inbound shipments, getting electronic waybills can be a huge increase in visibility because within a few minutes after a shipment is released to the rail carrier by the shipper, you will receive an electronic waybill record with all of the necessary information that you need to begin tracking the railcar (i.e. railcar initial / number, destination, route, etc.).

If you are party to the shipment (i.e. shipper, consignee, freight Payer), you should be able to get an electronic copy of the waybill for no charge from the Class I railroads and a few short lines and regionals. I can’t vouch for all of the railroads, but I’ve been told that they prefer if just one account is established per company. So don’t be surprised if they are not too responsive if three other departments in your company have already hit them up for the same thing. After all, this is a free service they are providing. Sounds like a lot of hassle you say? Don’t VANs (value added networks) do this already? Sure. Aren’t the waybills in the format of EDI (electronic data interchange) gobbledygook (yes this is the correct spelling – I looked it up in Wikipedia) format when you get them directly from the railroads? Yes. And yes it is true that the VAN can translate the waybill record into something that is easier to work with such as a comma delimited text file or an Excel spreadsheet. They can also deliver the files in several different ways. But in many cases, getting the waybills directly from the railroads can save you significant money – even when you factor in the cost of the tools and effort required to get the files and translate the EDI formatting.

Let’s look at some rough costs and of course I encourage you to check around yourself. Based on my experience, getting waybills from a VAN (value added network) translated to a simple text format (comma delimited) will run you about $0.20 to $0.30 per record. Typically there is only one waybill record generated per shipment, but sometimes corrections cause two or more records to be generated. To keep things simple, let’s just assume that there is only one record per shipment and average it out to $0.25 per record. Hey, we are a smallish shipper (i.e. less than 100 shipments per month), you think to yourself. $0.25 per record is nothing – that would only be $25.00 per month! Whoa there high roller, most VANs have a minimum monthly rate with at least a one year commitment. The monthly minimum can be as high as $2,000. Ouch! If you are a larger shipper with 10,000 shipments per month, you are looking at a $2,500 per month. For mid-size shippers, you will be paying at least several hundred dollars per month and perhaps a high monthly minimum. Again, check around yourself for exact pricing for the particular situation, but at least you know the questions to ask and the costs to look out for.

Ok, now is the time for a shameless plug. Hey, I’ve got to pay a few bills too! For you smallish shippers out there, there is at least one value added reseller (VAR) of a leading VAN (VANVAR?) that will sell you just the waybill records that you need with no long term contracts and no monthly minimum. For you larger shippers or committed do-it-yourselfers, read on.

If you are still game at getting waybills directly from the railroads, here is how to do it.

Contact the e-business departments of the railroads that originate your inbound or outbound shipments. Note that most short line or regional railroads will not be able to deliver waybill records to you. This is typically not a problem because for most railcar shipments in North America, at least one Class I railroad is involved in the shipment. All Canadian and U.S. Class I’s can provide waybills; I have no experience with Mexican railroads (if anyone does, please post your experiences). If the railroad that originates the shipments cannot provide them to you, then contact the next Class I railroad in the route and ask them to provide them. If you are not sure how to reach these departments, just call the central customer service number and ask them to transfer you. You will need to send a letter on your company letterhead authorizing this and specifying which waybills you wish to receive for example, all loaded shipments where Company ABC is the consignee. Once this letter is received, they will typically send you a form with some information they need from you. Here is the information that you will need at your fingertips in order to fill out most forms (I recommend including it in the letter to save time, but you will probably need to fill out the form anyway):

1. Your company network IP address. When you try to connect to the railroad FTP server from within your company, your connection will have an IP address. Some railroads need to know what that address or range of addresses will be so that they can allow it through their firewall. You can get this from your IT department.
2. Your company business contact telephone number, email address, mailing address.
3. Your company technical contact telephone number, email address, mailing address and 24 hour contact number. This should be someone who is familiar with your network and FTP. Don’t panic, I have never heard of a railroad contacting someone in the middle of the night. However, be sure to care for your FTP account and notify the railroad if you are no longer using it.
4. All of the company names and variations (that you know of) that you ship or receive freight under. For example, “ABC Corporation”, “ABC Corp.”, “ABC Inc.”. The spelling must be exact. Note: if you have a lot of variations in spellings contact your trading partners and ask that they use a consistent spelling. This is critical in automation. You may find that if the variations persist, it may be too unreliable to get waybills directly from railroads due to all of the manual intervention required for all of these different spellings at each different railroad. In this case, I recommend that you get your waybills from a VAR or your friendly VANVAR. See more about this here. My rule of thumb: The more variations of company spellings and the more railroads that you ship with, the more you should look to a VAN or VANVAR to provide electronic waybills.
5. Optional: FTP server address, folder, username, password for railroads to push waybills to. You can get this from your IT department. If you prefer that the waybill data is pushed to your own FTP server, please let the railroad know. In some cases, particularly with short lines, they will not be able to provide an FTP server for you to pull data from anyway. If you do not have an FTP server, and need one, please let me know and I can help you out.

After you return the completed form, they will establish an FTP server account and waybill record files will begin showing up. You will be provided the address, user name and password to the FTP server.

Now that the railroads are sending waybills to you, there are two additional challenges. Getting the waybill files from the FTP servers and then translating those files into a useable format like a spreadsheet or comma-delimited text.

Getting the waybill files from the FTP server is fairly simple when you know how to do it. You can use something as simple as Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer). Just type the FTP address into address text box at the top (example: ftp://ftp.myftpserver.com). It will then prompt you for a user name and password and voila, you are in! After that, you may copy and paste the files as you would from any other folder. Note that some of the servers will remove the files once they have been copied. Be sure that you remove the files yourself if they are not removed automatically so the files don’t stack up and you get a midnight call from the frustrated FTP server admin who noticed that your account is hogging all of his precious free disk space. There are other good FTP clients such as Core FTP (free) and WS_FTP (fifty bucks or so, but loaded with features and automation). If you wish to embed FTP into a software application for the ultimate in automation, I have had really good results with products from Dart Communications.

Now the translating. There are software components that you can embed in a software application. This is more complex, but will enable you to really fine tune and completely automate the process. Take a look at a company called Etasoft. I have used a product of theirs with good results. There are other types of translators – if you search on “EDI translators”, you will find several. The investment in translator software ($1,500 to $3,000 or more) can be intimidating, but compared to the cost of paying for VAN translation and you may come out way ahead in the long run.

OK, so what is the format of these electronic waybills anyways? For you techies, here is the deal. ASC X12 is a committee chartered by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) to develop uniform standards for interindustry electronic exchange of business transactions electronic data interchange (EDI). This committee came up with transaction sets for the rail industry and the waybill is called “417”. The latest “version” of the 417 is 005050 (Version 5, Release 5, Subrelease 0). You can purchase the specification here for about $300, which will show you how to interpret or translate the transaction set.

There is another option that provides the combined FTP getting and translation of waybills. Warning: this is another plug (remember those bills I have to pay?). Railcar Management System (RMS) can download from multiple FTP servers and translate waybills in an automated fashion. All you have to do is tell RMS about where to pick up the files (Internet address, user name, password) and tell it when to run. For a reasonable monthly fee, the RMS Waybill license enables you to easily get waybills directly from the rail carriers. RMS stores the original waybills files as well as the data in its database. Its report writer enables you to export the waybill records in Excel, comma delimited, and many other formats.

Hopefully you now have a better idea about why and how to get electronic waybills from the railroads. Thanks for reading and please post comments that will help us all learn more about railroad railcar tracking!

All the best,

Jim