Marcellus Shale Fracking – Transloading Bulk Materials for Marcellus Shale Drilling

Posts Tagged ‘Bulk cargo’

The railcar transloading business has been in America for well over 100 years. The first ones were created by providing a service to those that needed an economical and safe way of transferring bulk material from railcars to tractor trailers.

The idea of this can from big industry. Most large manufacturing plants have their own transloading stations on site at their facilities. They also had a rail line running to them so the delivery of bulk material by railcar could be made.

There was a need to provide this service to the smaller business man and for industries that had small locations located in many different areas of the country. This evoked the American entrepreneur spirit in the pioneers in the transloading business.

When a feasibility study was conducted, it was determined that the average tractor trailer could make a delivery of bulk items in a 300 mile radius of a transloading station in just one day. This is the area in which any transloading station could solicit business from their community. By placing a transloading station in an area of the country that had business which needed this type of service, the building of transloading stations commenced.

It all depends on what types of industry is located in any 300 mile radius of a centrally located station that will determine if this is a profitable business venture. In the Marcellus shale rock basin in the north eastern portion of America, this service is needed by the natural gas and oil exploration companies.

This is a very large industry but they have multiple sites located in thousands of places in this area. For this reason it would not be economically feasible to run a rail line to each production well. By using a transloading station located within 300 miles of their well, the delivery of bulk material, like frac sand can be more efficiently and at a reduced cost than doing it themselves.

This saves the energy exploration companies money by them not having to spend capital on rail lines, a facility for the off loading of the material, the equipment to make the transfer and the storage bins for the material. By utilizing the transloading stations for the transfer and then the trailers as the storage bins, the cost of drilling a well is done at a lower cost.

This same service of railcar transloading is also used by many smaller businesses that have the need for large scale bulk items so the transportation costs are manageable. This also makes use of professionals that only handle bulk transfers for this task can be done at the lowest possible cost in the fastest time frame possible.

Related articles

• Marcellus Drilling Transport (transloading.org)
• Transporting Sand for Natural Gas (transloading.org)
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Image via Wikipedia

The use of Truck-Rail Bulk Transloading has been the main mechanism that large industry has used to move bulk items for nearly a century now. This business has transformed from a simple set of railroad cars pulling into town being offloaded at the train station to having specific stations to off load the bulk material used in the industrial business world to meet the demands of the US economy.

The reason for this specialized service have many advantages over other forms of transportation of the bulk items that include lower fuel and overall cost along with a reduced amount of emissions involved in the transportation of the material. In many cases the emissions have been reduced to transport the material by up to 90 percent and the fuel used is reduced by up to 50%.

The handling of the material is a big factor in the safety of the transloading of the material along with the quality of it. For large scale movement of bulk items, the need for specialized and dedicated equipment is necessary for this process to be efficient and to prevent contamination. This is only done at properly equipped transloading stations.

The workers at these transloading stations are trained to properly handle these items on a regular basis. This way the material can be offloaded from the railcars to the tucks in the quickest and safest manner possible. This reduces the demurrage on the rail cars which again helps to lower the overall cost of transporting the bulk items to their final destination.

A majority of the transloading stations are near major municipalities but not directly in them. This allows for industry to use these stations so only a short distance needs to be traveled by truck for the bulk items journey to be complete without having to deal with excessive traffic. This saves on time and fuel costs.

The overall purpose of the truck-rail bulk transloading is to make this hazardous operation as safe as possible while reducing the costs of transporting the items in a quality manner so no damage or contamination is experienced by the bulk items. This saves on time, money, fuel and reduced the amount of emissions that are produced when the transporting of bulk items is done by other means.

Related articles

• Railcar Sand Unloading (transloading.org)
• More About Transloading Silica Sand (transloading.org)
• Transload Equipment for Bulk Sand (transloading.org)