Drayage Capacity Critical due to congestion at CN /CP Rail yards
Due to sustained strong container volumes from the ports coming into CN and CP rail terminals in Toronto and Montreal, these inland rail terminals are currently extremely congested. Truckers are facing long wait times up to 8 hours and more to get service. This is resulting in a productivity loss through a reduced number of moves they are able to accomplish in a given day. The unreliability of service at the terminals means the truckers are challenged to keep appointment times and windows and deliver direct from terminals leading to more prepulls to their own yards, requiring an additional move for the final mile delivery. The challenges also continue with the Rail Reservation appointments to pickup or empty return containers. There is also a severe shortage of yard space to return empty containers after a delivery requiring truckers to triangulate containers back to their own yards and store them before finally returning containers when space becomes available.
All these factors have put a lot of pressure on the truckers and the existing trucking capacity. Truckers are unable to service the current volumes due to the above mentioned reasons. We are seeing an increased number of shipments where getting timely service is not possible. This has also led to a variety of additional costs to perform a pick up and delivery. These additional charges are Rail storage, detention, demurrage, Prepulls, Post Delivery pulls to trucker’s yards, Lift on/Lift Off at trucker’s yards, Yard Storage, Waiting time, Plug in and Reefer Monitoring charges amongst others. Farrow is working with an expanded vendor base to minimise service disruptions and we are making all reasonable efforts to avoid or to minimize these costs for our customers whenever possible. As a Freight Forwarder, we have no option but to on pass these costs when incurred to the cargo interest as this situation is out of our direct control. These charges remain the responsibility of the cargo owners
CN rail, as a temporary solution for the above situation, has introduced a few relief container yards in the GTA & Montreal areas. Containers are now being transferred at a cost to these off-site locations to create more storage space for the incoming container volumes. Whilst we remain hopeful that the prevailing conditions will improve at CN /CP rail terminals in all likelihood the current situation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future or at least for the next few months.
If you have any questions or concerns in this regard, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the Farrow team or submit a Contact Us form.
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