# shipping hay by rail?



## plowboy14505 (Nov 2, 2008)

i work for a small railroad here in upstate new york and also have a small farm i was wondering if anybody has ever shipped hay by rail or would like too ship hay by rail? how much a box car holds vs a box trailer?


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## Production Acres (Jul 29, 2008)

My small experiences
We tried this several years ago - we have a siding 1.5 miles from our main barn that is owned by Norfolk/Southern. We were trying to ship some hay from Minnesota to our farm here in TN. The railroad would do it, but, the cost per ton on what we could get into a large boxcar with 75# bales alfalfa was almost identical to what a semi truck would haul it for, and we had to unload it at the railroad and load it onto our trucks and then haul it to the barn. The difference being, the semi would deliver it in 1-2 days and back it into our barn, adn the railroad was 1.5 miles away, and would deliver in 1-4 weeks depending on their schedule. We also quoted some hay put on a container, loaded on the railcar, unloaded 60 miles from here and then trucked to us, but it was very cost prohibitive.
That having been said, as I understand it, Larsen farms in Idaho, owns about 120+ of their own railcars and puts supercompressed hay in them - thus maximizing on teh weight capacity of the railroad, and they ship many thousands of hay into FL in that fashion. then they backhaul cottonseed hulls back out of the south into the northwest for cheap cattle feed. This arrangement probably works very well for them and the railroad probably gives them a very good rate as they are shipping many multiple car loads. 
Shipping by rail would probably be very effective if you had a good rail siding on both ends and were shipping 5-10+ cars every time, every week.


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