CSX (NASDAQ: CSX) has taken steps to significantly upgrade its intermodal offerings out of its terminal in northwest Ohio.
Both CSX and BNSF announced Tuesday that they had reached agreement that would allow intermodal service on BNSF out of the ports of Los Angeles & Long Beach to be hauled directly into the CSX terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio. The service will be five days a week and run both eastbound and westbound.
A BNSF spokeswoman said the service would continue to run through Chicago, which is the easternmost point of the BNSF intermodal system. But there won’t need to move containers from the BNSF terminal in Chicago to that of CSX. Intermodal consultant Brian Bowers (who is on the Board of Advisors of FreightWaves) said that transfer now needed to be undertaken by truck.
“The beauty of this is that the one train stays intact as it goes railroad to railroad and it won’t get grounded in Chicago,” Bowers said. “It won’t get delayed and all this handling doesn’t need to occur.”
The service commences October 29.