Sometimes A Great Notion

Logistics still rides the rails

It’s easy to get caught up in the romance of the rails. There’s real magic in the nostalgic idea of locomotives steaming across the American West or watching the landscape rattle by from the sepia-toned comfort of a Pullman car. And while we all acknowledge that those fantasies are the product of a bygone age, railroads in and of themselves an important piece of the logistics puzzle.

Rather than being relegated to relic status, shipping by rail remains one of the fastest, most environmentally friendly and and economically viable means of getting products from one place to another. It’s incredible to think that a system that races its roots back to the 19th century remains not only active, but essential.

Here are some hard numbers on what makes rail transport so effective. It takes one gallon of fuel to move one ton of freight 484 miles by rail. That’s the distance between our Savannah facility and Miami. In 2009, 173.46 million tons of freight moved through Georgia via rail. In order to make up those numbers via traditional trucking, almost 10 million additional trucks would have to hit the road.

That’s keeping things on track.