Latest / The Intermodal Logistics Podcast / The long (and short-line) of Texas rail freight

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The long (and short-line) of Texas rail freight · The Intermodal Logistics Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker: Thanks very much for joining us on this edition of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast.
• 0:08
  Speaker: I'm Kevin Baxter with my Co host Today InTek Logistics President Shelli Austin.
• 0:11
  Speaker: Hey, Shelli.
• 0:13
  Speaker: Hey, Kevin.
• 0:13
  Speaker: And today we are headed down to Texas to learn about short line railroads there and a lot of other aspects of logistics in Texas that are maybe a little unique there.
• 0:25
  Speaker: Joining us to talk about it is Joey Evans, Director of Business Support and Development at TNW Corporation.
• 0:32
  Speaker: Joey, thanks very much for joining us.
• 0:34
  Speaker: I thank you so much Kevin and Shelly.
• 0:36
  Speaker: So to start with, tell us a little bit about yourself and and your background in in rail and the industry in general.
• 0:45
  Speaker: So I've had the honor of of being a railroader for over 2 decades now.
• 0:53
  Speaker: I work at a company, as you mentioned TNW Corporation, where a transportation logistics company based in Dallas that has a focus in short, on railroads.
• 1:03
  Speaker: I I started my career as a conductor and later progressed over to an engineer before reaching management.
• 1:12
  Speaker: It's a most people when they look at when they look at the roles of railroads, most people attribute A conductor as being the person that drives a train, which is a little backwards.
• 1:24
  Speaker: The engineer is actually the person that drives the train, and the conductor is the person more in charge of the train and switching the rail cars.
• 1:37
  Speaker: So how did you go from, go through both positions and then and then get into where you are now?
• 1:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:41
  Speaker: So the pieces kind of fell fell in place for me just by happenstance.
• 1:48
  Speaker: I I was in management living around the Washington DC area.
• 1:53
  Speaker: There was a position at a, a short line railroad, which would, would put me at home a little bit more.
• 2:02
  Speaker: And during that time in 2008, it was kind of a kind of a gap in the market for technology.
• 2:07
  Speaker: So I kind of weaseled my way into the technology aspect of railroading, which I spent a lot of my career on the customer service, customer success technology aspect, and then found my way into government affairs and business development.
• 2:27
  Speaker: Just because I, I'm a relationship person.
• 2:32
  Speaker: I, I tend to gravitate towards trying to help people find solutions for the challenges they have.
• 2:38
  Speaker: And so it's been a, it's been a great ride over the last five years of trying to help grow our our company and then also the short line market in, in as a whole.
• 2:48
  Speaker: Great.
• 2:48
  Speaker: So, so yeah, tell us about that company TNW and and we mentioned short line, but it it's more than just short line.
• 2:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:59
  Speaker: So TNW 45 years old next year, based out of Dallas, really specialized in the full logistics experience.
• 3:06
  Speaker: We do have a focus in shoreline railroads with four in the state of Texas, one in Dumas, TX, which is interesting fact about that one.
• 3:14
  Speaker: It is the world's largest privately owned railcar storage facility, which we can talk about.
• 3:22
  Speaker: Then we have one in Brownwood, TX which when people think short line railroad, they they tend to think small, which are Brownwood location is your typical shorter route of a short line.
• 3:36
  Speaker: And and then we have Gonzales, TX which is in the what we call the Golden Triangle, which is Austin, Houston and San Antonio.
• 3:43
  Speaker: And then we're the operator at the Port of Victoria.
• 3:46
  Speaker: So in each one of those locations, while vastly different in the markets that they serve, they are what we call one stop, one stop supercenters.
• 4:00
  Speaker: So we do transloading, we have railcar cleaning, we have running repairs on rail cars and then also your your freight, which is your first and last mile.
• 4:13
  Speaker: Joey talking about the first and last mile and, and all the different things and transloading, those are all things that we find in our intermodal space.
• 4:22
  Speaker: But we tend to spend a little more time.
• 4:24
  Speaker: Although we do international boxes, we, we have a lot of 53 foot container.
• 4:31
  Speaker: And I, I always feel like that the short lines, they're very different all over in the different states, but they don't do as much on the 53 foot side as, as you would see traditional car load or the international small boxes.
• 4:43
  Speaker: So tell us a little bit about that.
• 4:44
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker: So it's a, that's a great observation.
• 4:47
  Speaker: You know, typically when you're looking at the short line Rd. as you mentioned, you know, first and last mile carload tank cars that you see traveling into the local communities.
• 4:57
  Speaker: But we, you know, short lines over the last several years have really kind of found its way into that smaller container market, the 53 footers at times just because there there has been a need for these inland ports.
• 5:12
  Speaker: We've seen a huge growth of inland ports around the state of Texas at the different ports.
• 5:20
  Speaker: So you'll see a lot of those 53 footers come in.
• 5:24
  Speaker: We will then put those on to, on to your chassis or you know, on to the the containers on to the flats.
• 5:32
  Speaker: And then we'll just pass those off to the little Class 1 railroads, which make it out to the national network and and travel up and down what we call the Interstate Highway of Rail.
• 5:47
  Speaker: You mentioned the the short line definition before as as being more about that revenue.
• 5:51
  Speaker: You mentioned instead of necessarily what other people explain the difference between sort of that perception and the reality.
• 6:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker: So a Class 1 railroads which are integral to the success of short water railroads, they are it's all based on revenue.
• 6:09
  Speaker: So when you look at it, I think it's around a billion dollars plus.
• 6:15
  Speaker: Now annual revenue per year is what you have to have to be considered a Class 1 railroad.
• 6:18
  Speaker: When you get into your Class 2, that's a billion down to 47 million a year in annual revenue.
• 6:25
  Speaker: And that's your like Iowa Interstate, Florida East Coast Railway, Alaska Railway.
• 6:32
  Speaker: And then you get into your your short line market, which is 47 million and below in annual revenue, which is where a majority of the short line railroads fall into place.
• 6:46
  Speaker: There are 615 short line roads in the United States.
• 6:49
  Speaker: Fifty of those are located here in Texas with 2500 track miles of short line railroad compared to the 10,000 track miles overall in the state.
• 6:59
  Speaker: Shout out to Iowa Interstate and also Florida East Coast.
• 7:04
  Speaker: We've had had guests from both of those, Luis with Florida East Coast and Andy with Iowa.
• 7:11
  Speaker: So shout out to both of you.
• 7:11
  Speaker: And, and, and one thing that I didn't mention yet is you also are specifically the president of the Texas Short Line and Regional Railroad Association too.
• 7:22
  Speaker: So, so you've got it as a part of your the business side and also in sort of an advocacy realm, I would say so.
• 7:31
  Speaker: So what do you do in that role and and how how important is that to short line overall?
• 7:39
  Speaker: It's extremely important.
• 7:39
  Speaker: I, I've had the honor for the last couple of years of leading that association and, and you mentioned it, advocacy.
• 7:45
  Speaker: So my job in the Texas short line is to educate and advocate.
• 7:49
  Speaker: So when you look at the number of new representatives that are coming through every two years in the state of Texas, this year, we're going to have about 38 to 40 new representatives inside of inside of the Texas Legislature.
• 8:04
  Speaker: And so my job then is to go in and try to educate to them, what are short lawn railroads?
• 8:12
  Speaker: How are we, how are we the backbone of your rural communities?
• 8:14
  Speaker: And then how do we, how do we look at upgrading the infrastructure, which is a a key component for what we do.
• 8:21
  Speaker: When you look at the infrastructure cost that's associated with with any railroad and specifically short run short line railroads, we're about 33 to 50% of our annual revenue goes back into infrastructure upgrades.
• 8:36
  Speaker: And a lot of that infrastructure that we utilize today is somewhere between 50 and 100 years old.
• 8:42
  Speaker: Wow.
• 8:48
  Speaker: So is that the the, the tracks, the crossings all?
• 8:51
  Speaker: Are there some other things that maybe people don't think about too?
• 8:52
  Speaker: That's right now all of that makes up that infrastructure cost.
• 8:57
  Speaker: You know, back in back in the early 80s, how short lines really kind of came into play was the staggers that I which was the deregularization of railroads.
• 9:08
  Speaker: And so these Class 1, as I mentioned, what I call the Interstate highway rail system.
• 9:11
  Speaker: These did the class ones realize that you know, while they did point A to point B really well, that it was hard for them to really service the small town communities and so short lines were really born from that.
• 9:28
  Speaker: And so you know, us as small business owners, you know, while T&W, we have a huge brand and a huge reach into the market, wait, we have a very small workforce.
• 9:39
  Speaker: And so we're less than 100 people total across our entire organization, including corporate support.
• 9:46
  Speaker: And so, you know, those items like rail crossings, that's just a huge burden.
• 9:51
  Speaker: Texas, in looking at the advocacy piece, Texas as big as it is, is one of the only states of our size magnitude that doesn't have state funding for shoreline, river and infrastructure.
• 10:09
  Speaker: So over the last several years we've, we've advocated really hard.
• 10:11
  Speaker: And last year we were able to have a bill signed into law that allowed for some infrastructure funding, although we haven't seen, we haven't seen the rewards of that yet.
• 10:22
  Speaker: It's we're very hopeful coming into the next legislative session we'll be able to to get some funding for that.
• 10:29
  Speaker: So I think it's interesting because I, I, I, you mentioned the FEC and you mentioned the Iowa and, and we, we, we work with some short lines.
• 10:42
  Speaker: The Indiana railroad is a big one for us, right?
• 10:44
  Speaker: And but what is interesting is unless you actually start working with the the short lines, you don't really understand the capabilities in the fact that you guys are, I'm just going to use the word a little bit more nimble because because you are a smaller, you know, network that you could do different things that the larger railroads can't do.
• 11:03
  Speaker: So I don't know that it's it's you probably have a lot of different segments of your customer base.
• 11:09
  Speaker: So you probably deal with some Bcos, but you probably deal with, you know, some of your customers or the steamship line.
• 11:15
  Speaker: Some of your customers are the actual railroad.
• 11:17
  Speaker: You know, tell a little bit about how you have a little different picture of who you're working with and who the customers you're serving with on the external, because a lot of people don't even know what short lines do.
• 11:28
  Speaker: Right, Yeah.
• 11:28
  Speaker: And that's such a great point to to talk about.
• 11:31
  Speaker: You know, when you look at our our customer base and the diversity, all of the segments of our business came out of a a need from one of our customers.
• 11:41
  Speaker: They had a, they had a challenge that they need solved and they came to us and then so they're born.
• 11:48
  Speaker: Our logistics business, it was 2016, you know, our customer said, hey, what we'd really like to, to start shipping some of this product, but we can't bring it into our refinery.
• 11:59
  Speaker: What can you do to help us?
• 11:59
  Speaker: And so we, we all sit down as a team and we developed this transfer business for us that turned into what it is today to where we, we've got, you know, probably, you know, upwards of 30 to 50 different commodities and customers that we're bringing in and transferring that product from either rail to truck or truck to rail to go out.
• 12:22
  Speaker: And that is your, you know, you may have a dairy farmer that has a need for four trucks, 4 trucks a week or it could be a month, but he needs to ship that by rail or vice versa.
• 12:35
  Speaker: And so that's where that business, you know, really helps the local community.
• 12:42
  Speaker: And then you've got you've got customers like Trinity Rail, who is one of the largest rail car manufacturers in the United States that came to us with a, a challenge that they had of trying to repair the cars that they own and be able to clean those rail cars out, right.
• 12:59
  Speaker: It's not like washing your car generally.
• 13:02
  Speaker: And so we then sit down with their leadership and our team and we said, well, we think we can solve for this.
• 13:09
  Speaker: We, we own a lot of real estate.
• 13:13
  Speaker: We can help you by putting your presence here for you.
• 13:16
  Speaker: So then our car cleaning business was born and then the repair business for Trinity that's at our locations was born.
• 13:22
  Speaker: And you know back to you know the comment I made about railcar storage and, and the TS and W railway we have you know 12,000 railcars is what we can hold in our railcar storage facility in Dumas, TX.
• 13:39
  Speaker: And that is a need that as the markets fluctuate.
• 13:43
  Speaker: So when the economy, when the economy is doing really well, you will see generally less cars and storage, right, Because most of these fleet owners that their fleet is being utilized their haul goods.
• 13:56
  Speaker: But when you see a dip in the market, you may see our request for storage increase, right.
• 14:04
  Speaker: So then because of the infrastructure improvements that we've made over the years, we're able to solve for that challenge.
• 14:09
  Speaker: And so we really look at our business as a way that we can solve any challenge that someone has.
• 14:15
  Speaker: And then we also as I mentioned, we own a lot of real estate.
• 14:20
  Speaker: So we're able, if somebody comes to us and says well, and we want to locate to Texas because you know, as we know and we see in the news, there's about 1500 people per day moving to Texas.
• 14:33
  Speaker: And a lot of industries are moving out of California in different places into Texas.
• 14:39
  Speaker: And so they're looking for places they can develop their manufacturing space.
• 14:42
  Speaker: And so now we can solve for that challenge.
• 14:44
  Speaker: So Speaking of the market then what are you seeing in Texas?
• 14:50
  Speaker: I mean, we've as a, as an overall in the nation overall things are seeming to pick up a little bit on the freight side right now, but it's, it seems to vary depending on where you are a little bit.
• 15:03
  Speaker: So, so what's Texas looking at right now and what kind of volume are you seeing?
• 15:05
  Speaker: Yeah, I think anytime you have a geopolitical event, you know, it can affect the, the car loads of what we're seeing.
• 15:11
  Speaker: I, I would say Texas has been very resilient through what we've seen so far this year.
• 15:18
  Speaker: You've seen a large number of, of plastics move out of the Gulf Coast just continuing to produce to the point to where they really can't keep up with the demand that they're having.
• 15:30
  Speaker: I think when you see fuel prices the way they are, you know, which is something that we monitor very closely, I think you'll see either, you know, a dip in the petrochemical space at times.
• 15:40
  Speaker: And then one thing that we're not seeing stop, you know, across Texas as a whole is construction, right?
• 15:47
  Speaker: So from all the tech stop projects that you see in the area, you know lumber and aggregates are continue to move at record numbers throughout the state.
• 15:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:59
  Speaker: So Speaking of oil, I mean we obviously know that the a lot of oil is produced and refined in Texas.
• 16:07
  Speaker: Are you seeing volume from from exports now that maybe you weren't before or is that been pretty steady for for you in particular?
• 16:12
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker: For us in particular, it's been pretty steady throughout this year, which is which has been a good sign for us.
• 16:21
  Speaker: You know the, the challenge that you always have as a a small business short line holding company when you, when you see oil prices fluctuate like they have over the last several months is you know, the price of fuel and how do you, how do you handle that right.
• 16:34
  Speaker: So what what we do is we are very operationally fluid.
• 16:38
  Speaker: Our teams get together, you know, on a weekly basis and we sit down and we figure out we as operationally fluid and efficient as, as we should be.
• 16:49
  Speaker: And if not, how do we make adjustments to that?
• 16:52
  Speaker: That's that's one of the things that us as TW, we we hold ourselves accountable.
• 16:55
  Speaker: We're very metric driven company, which our leadership and CEO has been a a staunch believer in technology and helping us make those decisions.
• 17:09
  Speaker: And so, you know, that's, that's something that even though the price of fuel has has risen, it really hasn't affected us like some people may think it has just because we are always in constant communication with one another and trying to figure out how to become more efficient.
• 17:25
  Speaker: Yeah, I know pretty much across the industry it's affecting everybody in in different ways.
• 17:34
  Speaker: Maybe scale helps with some places and and obviously truckload is more directly affected right away.
• 17:41
  Speaker: But but yeah, it's interesting we're talking about moving it, but of course you're not immune to the the pressures of the pricing too.
• 17:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 17:50
  Speaker: So you mentioned the Port of Victoria, you mentioned plastics are are one thing that's kind of continued rolling.
• 17:56
  Speaker: What are you doing out of out of the Port of Victoria and what what are you transporting there to?
• 18:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 18:00
  Speaker: So the the Port of Victoria is an interesting, interesting place for us to be.
• 18:07
  Speaker: That started about five years ago.
• 18:09
  Speaker: That's a that's a growing port.
• 18:09
  Speaker: It's one of the fastest shallow water ports in the country.
• 18:13
  Speaker: When you look at, when you look at Port of Victoria in particular, they've seen about 800% growth over the last five years.
• 18:24
  Speaker: We, you know, part of what we do for Port of Victoria is not only the operator of their, of their rail park, but also for business development and marketing.
• 18:33
  Speaker: And so you're, you're seeing in that area, you see a lot of petrochemical, a lot of aggregates moving through.
• 18:39
  Speaker: And then Port of Victoria is continuing to to grow.
• 18:43
  Speaker: They've got about a 3000 acre footprint that they're continuing to build out now and attract businesses at record dumpers coming into Victoria, which again, when you look at, when you look at how Port of Victoria really helps Texas as a whole, there's no, no day that goes by that you don't hear about congestion in the Houston market.
• 19:05
  Speaker: So Victoria being just far enough outside of that Houston market attracts a lot of those businesses, a lot of freight that otherwise would be caught up in that congestion.
• 19:16
  Speaker: And speaking in Houston's kind of the southern part of Texas, but even further South is, is that border and cross-border is obviously a, a big driver of freight volume across, you know, North America as it is, but of course Texas being right there.
• 19:38
  Speaker: So, so what's your role with with cross-border freight and and how that moves?
• 19:43
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:43
  Speaker: So, so TNW in particular has a couple of different moves that we help on the on the cross-border stuff.
• 19:50
  Speaker: You know that the cross-border with when you look at when you talk about the border, a lot of people just say, oh, you got to make it to the border.
• 19:59
  Speaker: Well, that's not the end of the move, right?
• 20:02
  Speaker: That's just the gateway into or out of America and Canada and so forth.
• 20:05
  Speaker: And so we have a couple of different moves to where, you know, people are hauling stuff out of Canada or vice versa into Canada and into Mexico.
• 20:15
  Speaker: And we really.
• 20:15
  Speaker: We really try to help facilitate and work with those end users to ensure that their their shipments are moving on time without any paperwork issues.
• 20:27
  Speaker: And so we've been very successful in in solving for again, those, those challenges that they've had, you know, other places.
• 20:32
  Speaker: With talking about the cross-border and then also the port work, I mean, and we, we've touched on this and mentioned it, but it just is going through my brain that you probably do a lot more trans loading than people imagine it would be.
• 20:45
  Speaker: My guess because the, the movement of containers or the movement, I mean, everything doesn't just completely move in the same unit all the time.
• 20:55
  Speaker: So would you say that that's one of your fastest growing opportunities is, is having those transloading services And not only just that you're not talking about regular, just palletized freight, you're talking transloading bulk, you're talking transloading heavy commodities.
• 21:08
  Speaker: That just is really kind of resonating here on what the capabilities could be.
• 21:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:13
  Speaker: When you look at when you look at translating it and you're absolutely correct, this become one of our fastest growing businesses that we've had in the last several years.
• 21:21
  Speaker: I mean the things that you're translating are just not, not pallets, they're not cold storage.
• 21:27
  Speaker: When you're talking steel coils, you're talking lumber used cooking oil, aggregates.
• 21:32
  Speaker: At at one point in time our portfolio included you know somewhere around 50 to 50 to 75 different commodities that people were asking us to translate for them.
• 21:45
  Speaker: And so when you think about that business, while that all sounds great, you know there's equipment involved in that, there's cost involved in the equipment for translating, there's manpower that goes along with that.
• 21:55
  Speaker: And then also there's there's operating plans.
• 21:58
  Speaker: And you know we have been we've been successful in the fact that during that time frame and and our growth in the logistics business that we haven't had any incidents occur.
• 22:09
  Speaker: We haven't had any damage freight that's occurred due to US trans loading, which is a another testament to you know the values that we have in our operating plan and our our operating team in general.
• 22:26
  Speaker: Speaking of the, the border, another, another thing that we, we see in the news a lot lately and you talked about working with truck drivers and, and all of that as well is increased enforcement on English language requirements, non domicile, all of that stuff.
• 22:41
  Speaker: Are you seeing capacity change in in your areas and and relationships that that you've seen in the past?
• 22:49
  Speaker: You know, you know I haven't.
• 22:54
  Speaker: In particular, it's that's a, that's a question that somebody asked me last week and you know, as I was talking to our team, you know, we just haven't, we haven't seen that right.
• 23:03
  Speaker: Everything's kind of been full and well, we have adjusted some of the technology that we have to ensure that, you know, every driver is able to understand exactly as we're, we're growing out of technology that everybody can understand what's on the screens.
• 23:18
  Speaker: And you know, so but, but for us, we haven't seen a slowdown, we haven't seen any issues and our team just keeps operating at a very high level.
• 23:33
  Speaker: So another issue that that everybody's dealing with in terms of exports, imports is tariffs.
• 23:39
  Speaker: Have you, have you seen some any kind of relationship there in terms of either cost or volume really since I guess towards the beginning of last year and I know policy continues to evolve both, you know, going over the ocean and, and cross-border as well.
• 23:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Speaker: So we, we have, you know, I, I've spoken to a lot of customers specifically in the lumber area, right, where a lot of that's a lot of the lumber's coming out of Canada that those people were affected by tariffs, especially late last year, coming into this year.
• 24:09
  Speaker: I was sitting down with one of our newest customers last week and we were, we were kind of reviewing where they were at and what the market, you know, outlook look like for the next 6 months.
• 24:21
  Speaker: And they seem positive on what they're seeing coming into it.
• 24:26
  Speaker: And so I'm very hopeful, I'm very hopeful that we'll just continue to see growth in those those different markets.
• 24:35
  Speaker: So you mentioned that that you've had some experience working with with class ones before and how is it different as somebody who's, you know, working for a company that deals with with a short line now versus working for a Class 1?
• 24:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 24:49
  Speaker: So what I like about a short line, there's a lot of things, but you really have you really have more of an opportunity to really provide white glove service out to customers when when you're part of a, a large railroad, you know, it's the, the more efficient you are in moving from point A to point B, the better, right?
• 25:15
  Speaker: And because they have these long hauls.
• 25:17
  Speaker: When you look at us, I mean, we are the people, you know, that are talking to the county judges and the mayor's everyday and we're in these commissioner in commissioner meetings every week.
• 25:26
  Speaker: And so, and these people that we're serving, you know, we see them at church, we see them at the ball field.
• 25:33
  Speaker: And so it really is a family environment, you know, the way that I look at it, you know, and so also it allows for, you know, the general short line railroads and, and, and again, there are exceptions to everything, but generally you're home every night, you know, you're not working the nights and the weekends.
• 25:57
  Speaker: So you have that better family, family work life balance, so you can attend your kids ball games and so forth.
• 26:05
  Speaker: And, and I think for us, you know, there's not our CEO sits right down the hall from me and, and our, the access that you have to the, the, the final decision makers.
• 26:19
  Speaker: It takes about that long to get a decision made at A at A at a smaller short line railroad as compared to some of the bureaucracy that goes on at some of the the larger organizations.
• 26:31
  Speaker: Yeah, that speaks to the nimble word they used.
• 26:33
  Speaker: It does a little bit earlier, a little easier to be nimble when you can just walk down the hall.
• 26:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker: But you know, when you look at our our class one partners there, there's a reason why they're making the revenue that they're making annually.
• 26:44
  Speaker: They're they're very good at what they do.
• 26:47
  Speaker: And you know, without them short lines wouldn't it wouldn't exist today, right.
• 26:55
  Speaker: I mean, they had the foresight in looking in the early 80s and say, hey, look, we know we're really good at a lot of things, but we're really struggling at the challenge of of stopping and serving 9 or 10 different customers in each one of these small towns.
• 27:11
  Speaker: And so by that, them having that that forethought and being able to identify what they may not do as well as other people came short lines, right?
• 27:28
  Speaker: And so now you know, there's 615 short lines across the United States, which is again, 615 small business owners that are out there just trying to make a difference in their community.
• 27:41
  Speaker: So how do you coordinate with them to to get the, you know, the freight from the short line to as you said, the the interstates of of railroad?
• 27:49
  Speaker: That's the, that's the beauty of technology, right?
• 27:52
  Speaker: So when, when I started at the railroad over 20 years ago, everything that you've done was written down on a sheet of paper.
• 28:01
  Speaker: You hand it off to someone and you had these, these large AS400 mainframes today, you know, while, while that is still the backbone of a lot of technology that's used in, in this space, technology has made it to where now everything is just flowing through EDI channels and through AP is and these different technological, you know, advancements that's happened.
• 28:27
  Speaker: And so, you know, transparency has become key.
• 28:30
  Speaker: You know, I, we call it the, you hear it everywhere, the Amazon effect people, when you order a package from Amazon, you can look at that and you can track it all the way to your doorstep and you, you get notifications that tells you that your package is 10 stops away.
• 28:45
  Speaker: And so the rail industry has really evolved in that manner over the last, I would say 10 years.
• 28:52
  Speaker: And so now the same questions that that customers used to ask a bus when they would call and say, can you tell me about where my rail car is now instead of asking that question, there's technology out there that just provides all of that too.
• 29:08
  Speaker: And where short lines used to be considered in the old days, the black hole of data, now I think most short line railroads are out leading the way for technological advancements.
• 29:21
  Speaker: And with the the class ones, obviously there's the the merger discussion right now.
• 29:30
  Speaker: And really it seems like over the last year plus or so, there's been a little bit of more of an initiative to make some extra connections, improve services in different areas are.
• 29:42
  Speaker: How exciting is that for you from from your perspective, to be able to connect to these networks that are working to improve?
• 29:48
  Speaker: Yeah, I think the mergers interesting, interesting point that, you know, I, I think we, I've taken the stance and I think of just trying to see how it's going to play out.
• 30:02
  Speaker: I think on paper at least of what they've explained sounds really great and we look forward to all those things.
• 30:08
  Speaker: We'll just have to see how it progresses.
• 30:12
  Speaker: I, I don't really, you know, I don't really look at it and say, well, this is something that's going to happen overnight because I know, I know the challenges that they're going to face as they go through this merger application and it's going to take a while.
• 30:28
  Speaker: And I, I just hope that hope they're able to deliver all the items that they, that they think they can.
• 30:36
  Speaker: I mean, we talked about the the fuel prices going up recently.
• 30:40
  Speaker: And have you gotten any new conversations from people who maybe were just using truck solutions before and then realizing maybe I can cut down on some of these costs by switching over to rail a little bit?
• 30:53
  Speaker: Yeah, I had that is that conversation this weekend with with someone that was feeling the effects of the fuel cost.
• 31:01
  Speaker: And you know how, you know, while they may not have a large amount of product that they can ship by rail, you know, if even if they can get one or two rental cars, you know, a month or or more out that that would really help them on their bottom line.
• 31:13
  Speaker: Just because fuel, fuel price, I mean, in, in Texas now in the DFW area, I think we're at $5.38 a gallon for diesel, right?
• 31:23
  Speaker: That is, that's a, that's a pretty expensive cost that people are having to undertake, yes.
• 31:28
  Speaker: All right.
• 31:31
  Speaker: Well, there are a lot of different directions we could have could continue to go here.
• 31:34
  Speaker: But before we let you go, tell us.
• 31:36
  Speaker: Tell us about where people can find more about TNW and anything else that you're doing right now.
• 31:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 31:46
  Speaker: So I, I TNW Corporation, www.tnwcorporation.com, you'll see everything that you need to know about our industrial development, our real estate that we've got to offer, and then also our, our team that's here to help.
• 32:02
  Speaker: And you know, we have every service, every service that you can, you can imagine, we generally will handle for you.
• 32:09
  Speaker: And if we don't have it, it's something we'd love to sit down and have a conversation on how we can help solve a challenge for you.
• 32:13
  Speaker: Great, Joey.
• 32:17
  Speaker: Thanks very much for your time.
• 32:17
  Speaker: We appreciate it.
• 32:17
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 32:17
  Speaker: Joey, thank you so much.
• 32:24
  Speaker: So as as we said during the the discussion, we've we've talked to a couple of other folks from with short line backgrounds and a couple of other kind of key markets.
• 32:35
  Speaker: Texas has got its own unique scenarios and in a number of ways.
• 32:37
  Speaker: I mean, you've got like the coast, you've got the Mexico border, and then you've just got all that space and all of what they're working on.
• 32:46
  Speaker: So really interesting to hear from Joey about how they deal with that.
• 32:48
  Speaker: Absolutely, yeah.
• 32:51
  Speaker: We've talked to a handful of short lines, We've talked to Class 2 railroads, we've talked to Class 1 railroads.
• 32:56
  Speaker: It's just interesting how there's different unique, different ways of handling things throughout each one of them.
• 33:01
  Speaker: But it is it is fun to explore the the short lines a little bit more and and what additional services they can offer and how that can kind of branch out the full logistics solution.
• 33:13
  Speaker: I know the the translating is something we've talked about with a couple of other guests lately as well.
• 33:19
  Speaker: Seems like it's it's on the tip of the tongue a little bit more I think so I.
• 33:23
  Speaker: Think so.
• 33:23
  Speaker: So interesting to hear that that that's that's a big part of their business as well.
• 33:31
  Speaker: But again, we thank Joey for joining us on this edition of the Intermodal Logistics podcast and we thank you for watching and listening as well.
• 33:40
  Speaker: You can find out more about us at www.inteklogistics.com.
• 33:46
  Speaker: We appreciate you liking subscribing, commenting.
• 33:49
  Speaker: You can e-mail us at podcast@ inteklogistics.com as well.
• 33:54
  Speaker: And for Shelli Austin, I'm Kevin Baxter, thanks again.
• 33:59
  Speaker: And we'll be back soon with another episode.