TT equips for growth: the heavy-lift double stack car will help intermodal penetrate new markets; after several years of prototype testing, Trailer train has placed production orders with two builders - Trailer Train Co

Railway Age, May, 1991

TT officers will say that the increase in business that carbuilders and component builders have had in the past several years may account for some of the problem. They also say that new designs may have contributed.

But they also say that the lack of quality is going to penalize those who lack it, under the SECO, for Supplier Evaluation Committee, process now in place.

Under that process, there are five elements, with quality getting 30%, cost getting 25%, delivery coming in at 20%, service rating 15%, and financial administration getting 10% on die scale. In addition, there's an alpha-qualifier, with an A-to-D rating, which is based upon the supplier's score on quality. The purpose, TT says, is to work with vendors, to focus on what's good and to work with vendors to correct what's bad.

* How the fleet sizes up. In the meantime, after looking at what TT plans in acquisitions for 1991, this was the shape of the intermodal fleet at the end of 1990:

-DTTX cars, five-unit, double-stack well cars with 125-ton trucks, 2,259 cars with capacity for 22,590 containers.

-TTAX cars, five-unit, articulated spine cars with retractable hitches for movement of containers and/or trailers, 1,702 cars with capacity for 8,510 containers/trailers.

-TTOX cars, single-unit Front Runner cars with single-axle trucks and the capability for handling a single trailer of up to 48 feet in length, 3,251 cars.

-TTLX cars, five-unit articulated TOFC cars capable of handling trailers of up to 48 feet in length, 511 cars with capacity for 2,555 trailers.

-TTWX cars, 89-foot, 4-inch all-purpose Twin-45 cars with retractable hitches for movement of two 45-foot trailers or four 20-foot containers (or combinations), 14,093 cars.

-TTRX/RTTX cars, four 89-foot TOFC platforms drawbar-coupled and equipped with 14 collapsible hitches to handle three 28-foot trailers or two 45-foot trailers on each platform or up to six 48-foot-to-57-foot trailers positioned to span the drawbar connections, with three prototypes tested in 1990 and plans to acquire at least 100 such four-platform cars in 1991.

Trailer Train, years ago, seemed to trail the market.

Today, caution demands that you don't get too far ahead. But TT is at least even, and ahead, so far as testing is concerned.

Its Husky-Stacks are already doing what they were intended to do, hauling heavy loads. In this case, it's solid waste, out of Seattle, compressed waste loaded into containers and then hoisted onto heavy-lift double-stack cars for movement to a landfill where the containers are lifted off, moved to the fill and tipped for unloading.

The 330-mile move is handled by Union Pacific for Waste Management, Inc. Intermodal equipment, obviously, has many uses.

Trailer Train wants to make equipment available for any of them that make economic sense.