As we continue to navigate the vast and complex landscape of logistics and shipping, our mission remains clear: to simplify, streamline, and secure the movement of your cargo from origin to destination. Today, I'm excited to share with you a significant enhancement to our platform that marks a pivotal moment in our journey together — comprehensive rail and intermodal visibility.
The challenge with Intermodal Rail
The intermodal rail network in North America, covering the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is essential for moving freight efficiently across these extensive countries. The top 25 container ports handled a total of 45.6 million TEUs in 2021 alone. Many of these containers travel inland, relying on a complex network that is operated by seven major Class-1 railroads and countless smaller carriers.
Unlike the options available in air travel, shipping containers by rail often means depending on several different rail carriers, each with their own systems and schedules. This can make tracking a container's journey quite challenging. Without a single, public tracking system, logistics operators must navigate through various individual carrier websites to find the estimated arrival times and other critical milestones for their containers. This process is not just cumbersome—it's also a significant drain on time and resources.
What's New in Terminal49: Rail and Intermodal Visibility
We're expanding our automated container tracking and risk management solutions to include comprehensive intermodal rail data. This service will offer a deeper and more granular view of your shipping container's journey across all your rail moves.
Here's what's new:
- Direct Connections to major North American rail carriers: Union Pacific, CSX Transportation, BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway.
- Expanded Rail Attributes: Available for pickup, Demurrage LFD (Last Free Day), Rail ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), rail pickup facility (inland destination, terminal and FIRMS code), rail terminal holds, and rail terminal fees.
- Visibility at Every Rail Milestone: Rail Loaded, Rail departed, Rail arrived, Rail unloaded, full out at rail pickup facility, and empty return.
- Integrate Rail data: Container rail attributes and milestones are available via our push-based API. In addition to the API, customers can integrate rail data via the Terminal49 DataSync product that provides a real-time sync for dozens of databases and warehouses out of box.
- Dashboard: We have additional container dashboard views that makes it easy to manage rail containers via a single dashboard on Terminal49.
- Containers Moving Over Rail – List of containers that have been loaded on rail with a Rail ETA.
- Containers At Pickup Facility – Containers Arrived at final rail terminal, with availability, LFD, Holds and fees.
- Containers Picked, Awaiting Empty Return – Containers gated out at final rail terminal awaiting empty return to manage per-diem risk.
- Containers Empty Returned – Containers confirmed that are empty returned.
Containers on Rail
Rail Awaiting Pickup
Rail Empty Returned
Why This Matters to the Logistic Operators & How It Changes their Day
Visibility has always been a challenge due to the different modalities of transport and the different carriers that touch the shipment. While some providers do offer visibility, it is discrete and specific to a single move, making it an operational issue.
But Terminal49's recent expansion to rail puts intermodal visibility on a single dashboard, helping us make coherent decisions on the fly, instead of putting disparate visibility data together to see the bigger picture.
The Current State of Rail Tracking
Many have shared the challenges of tracking rail containers in today's environment:
- Manual Processes and Inefficiencies: From phone calls to manual lookups on various carrier websites, the process is time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Lack of Real-Time Data: The absence of fresh rail milestones, such as Last Free Day (LFD) and availability, often leads to operational blind spots.
- Interchange Delays: With 30% of inland shipments experiencing interchanges between rail carriers, visibility becomes even more critical.
This enhancement is a direct response to the feedback and needs from logistics operators and our customers that have a need to have real-time rail data in order to make decisions. It represents our commitment to providing the operators, your company and your customers with the tools and insights needed to navigate the complexities of modern shipping logistics.
Imagine a day without the need for manually tracking rail containers on websites, updating spreadsheets, or dealing with limitations of your existing TMS and data provider. With Terminal49, that day is here. Our platform offers:
- A Single Source for Comprehensive container Data: From shipping lines, ocean terminals, vessel AIS location data, to rail carriers, all in one place.
- Complete Rail terminal data: Providing LFD and availability data that's not available elsewhere.
- Enhanced Coordination: Share critical information with customers, partners, and providers effortlessly.
How operators manage today:
- Multiple phone calls
- Rail and ocean carrier websites
- Manual spreadsheet updates
- Tracking transloadings
- File LOA
- Estimated or no LFD
- Railinc
- Manual drayage scheduling
How operators manage with Terminal49:
- Single dashboard
- One data pipeline
- End-to-end visibility
- Automated tracking and updates
- Real-time alerts and notifications
- Automatic LFD and Availability
- No need to sign LOAs
- Assisted drayage scheduling
The Future of Container Risk Management
This is more than just a new feature in our platform; it's a step towards a future where every aspect of your shipment's journey is transparent, predictable, and under control. A step towards Terminal49’s mission to Automate Global Trade. A step towards building the best tools for the modern logistics operators. As we roll out these new features, we're excited to see how they empower you to manage your logistics more effectively.
You can see these updates live on Thursday, March 28th at 1:00 pm CT. Register for the demo webinar here.
Thank you for your trust, support, and partnership. Together, we're not just tracking containers; we're paving the way for a smarter, more connected world of logistics.
Let’s Automate Global Trade.
Akshay
Akshay Dodeja
CEO, Terminal49
