Here at RSI Logistics, we believe in the power of proactive rail management and rail tracking, and have written a multitude of guides to help rail shippers prepare ahead of time for events going awry:
- Managing Delayed Railcars with the Railroad Shutdown Request
- 10 Rail Shipping Cost Saving Strategies
- 3 Reasons Your Rail Freight Logistics Isn’t Working – And How to Fix it
- What is Rail Shipping Demurrage and How to Dispute It
But what happens when an element in your rail logistics takes an unexpected turn in a way you could have never planned for? How do you overcome these sorts of challenges?
Unfortunately, just like every mode of transportation, rail freight is not guaranteed to arrive on time. One month a car you ship may take five days to arrive at the destination, then the next month it could take fifteen days to arrive at the same destination. One of the main functions of our Client Success team is to utilize Rail Command® or our shipment monitoring services to find when our client’s shipments are hung up in transit – and over our forty years of improving rail logistics, we have seen a myriad of unexpected challenges.
Our solution? Ensure you have visibility on your fleet of railcars and can obtain accurate reporting data. Keep track of your records and use them to open discussions with the carriers. And establish open lines of communication and accountability.
The results we’ve seen from these methods are improved transit times and cost savings.
Preparing for the Unexpected with Rail Tracking – Reporting and Visibility
Reporting and visibility are the foundation of managing your in-transit fleet and responding to unexpected challenges.
Visibility is essential for knowing where your fleet is. Though this is vitally important in the day to day of managing rail freight logistics, it takes even more of a spotlight during moments of crisis. Trying to manage your disrupted shipping through manual methods can be a massive time sink.
Reports that are generated from your rail logistics offer valuable information that can assist you in making informed decisions based on data, rather than biased conjecture. Reports can provide insight into such questions as:
- Where is the railcar in question?
- When will my car arrive at its destination?
- How long has my railcar been delayed?
- And, in some cases, why has my car been delayed?
For receivers, you can run inbound trace reports manually; however, you can only obtain reports for specific locations. If you have multiple locations, you will have to manually check each individual location. For shippers, you can only have visibility manually by going to your specific rail carrier’s website, and manually inputting information on each railcar to check its location and progress. If there are any challenges that arise, by using these methods, you will be manually running reports.
However, there are smart solutions, railcar management software, that can modify the above manual methods and make them automated. For instance, in Rail Command, a current sightings report can be used to automatically pull those reports to provide visibility and answer those key questions. From there you can even apply filters and add additional columns that will give you a much more complete picture than manual methods.
Post-Challenge Follow Up
Record Keeping
Keeping a record of your railcars that have been delayed in transit is a primary method of overcoming unexpected challenges. These records can help you build a story of why your railcar was delayed.
To manually obtain reports post-delay, you can pull reports for each individual, specific cars in your fleet. Again, you must go to each rail carrier’s site to do so. For automated methods, once more rail management solutions can turn this process into a few clicks instead of a lengthy process. For instance, the Service Logs feature in Rail Command can collate this information from the current sightings report. From there, you can apply filters and add additional columns that will provide a more complete picture. You can also make a note within the service log to keep your records all in one comprehensive database.
From there, you can create cases with the rail carriers or use a service provider such as our team at RSI Logistics. Once the carriers have the records, they can use this historical information to assist them in concentrating on problem areas and working to find solutions to improve traffic efficiency.
The carriers accomplish this by running reports of your open cases to find where problems are occurring. From there, they determine a course of action. Be cautious and proactive – often in the rail carrier’s website, when the shipment is complete, the attached case notes and delayed car notes will disappear.
However, automated rail shipping solutions like Rail Command can accomplish reports of records in the service logs, and these records cannot be deleted by the system unless you choose. Below are examples of how Rail Command creates cases with the rail carriers.
Accountability
Often a simple phone call to the carrier about a shipment that has been delayed in transit will trigger an action with the carrier that results in getting your railcar moving again.
With all the challenges shippers have been facing over the last few years, the last thing you want to do is let the railcar sit, as occasionally, railcars have been known to sit for a month or longer. Maintaining open lines of communication with your carrier(s) and escalating when necessary is important to keeping your fleet fluid.
Improved Rail Shipping Logistics through Rail Tracking
In our experience, we have seen that actively tracking your fleet or using a tracking management tool can improve transit times and provide cost savings. Staying on top of your railcars in transit and working with your carrier(s) will help bring the delay to the attention of the appropriate parties in a timelier fashion, and keeping your fleet moving means you are utilizing your railcars to their maximum capacity. The more railcars sit, the more it will cost. Having the proper tools for visibility is proven to possibly save administrative and management efforts by 25%.
To further enhance the management of your rail fleet and ensure you’re not incurring unnecessary costs because of idle or delayed railcars, access our comprehensive Getting Started with Railcar Tracking and Tracing Checklist for free. This resource was written by RSI Logistics’ shipment management service experts and is tailored specifically for rail professionals like you. The goal of our shipment management service is to streamline your operations while saving your company significant time and effort – and we put that knowledge to work in this checklist.
Equip yourself with the rail tracking knowledge to keep your shipments moving efficiently.
