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Norfolk Southern

The rail freight industry has had fluctuations in achievements with regards to various ways of shipment. The competition of shipment with various other means available in terms of sky and highway has made rail transportation less desirable. Rail freight is very inflexible; which is the reason why road freight transport has become very popular. The current status of rail freight transportation is not very efficient. In terms of the process of how Southern Norfolk and its associated transportation companies; there is not much cooperation regarding effectively swapping 40” boxes for 53” boxes. The issue came about decades ago when there were not enough 53” boxes so the focus was on creation of more 53” without much forecasting into the future of how this would ultimately affect the rail transportation industry. Norfolk Southern began operations in 1838 which connected two points in Virginia. Growth occurred rapidly for the company when they gained and additional 14 US states to service. President Mahone was responsible for the linking of Norfolk and Petersburg, Southside, Virginia, and Tennessee. A partner in one of the acquired firms Kimbell was responsible for creation of the Pochantas Coalfields West Virginia which created lines leading the various states including Ohio. When Virginia merged with Southwest this was considered an innovative and new way of the rail transportation industry with Northwest leading the trade. Conrail, which was originally the first commercial railroad in America, entered the passenger rail transportation industry. Both freight and passenger rail service grew dramatically then dramatically decreased after World War II. Much of the rail freight transportation lost a large amount of their business to the road transportation industry. Around 1980 The Stagger Rail Act made it possible for rail freight to become competitive once more. Conrail was auctioned in the market and Norfolk Southern was the winning bid. Conrails IPO made history with a record breaking 1.8B. In 1997 Norfolk teamed up with a similar rail transport to control Conrail’s operations and assets. This grew operations an additional 7200 miles. Present day Northfolk Southern subsidiary controls approximately 1.2 million acres of coal, natural gas and timber through states ranging from Tennessee to West Virginia.
Intermodal freight transport encompasses the shipping of cargo in a container or car using various types of transportation such as trucks, ships and railways without any handling of the freight itself when exchanging methods. This technique decreases freight handling as well as creating efficient security, in turn reducing shrinkage and speeds up transportation. The benefit is the reduction in cost.

Containerization is the use of a steel box that carries the cargo as freight on the railway. This style of transportation revolutionized the way freight has been shipped. One of the benefits is allowing double stack transport to reduce damage and allow safety for the cargo. Containers that ship by rail are placed on a flat car. A 10,000 foot train is capable of carrying at least 330 boxes.
The problem with international boxes on domestic cars is ordinarily with government regulations. Height clearance has been an issue when utilizing the piggyback method outside of U.S limits. This ultimately effects and limits business operation objectives.
The problem with containers on conventional cars is that there was an issue decades prior regarding what size cars where necessary for future rail productivity. There are two sizes which are 40ft and 53ft containers. In the past the goal was to create more 53ft containers to be able to ship more cargo and to compete with the existing 40ft containers. However; forecasting was not thoroughly examined for the reason that as of present day there is a surplus of 53ft containers that are not being utilized in an efficient manner. The surplus has become a problem for the rail industry since there has not been creation of a plan that properly addresses what to do with additional 53ft containers that are not being utilized.

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