Blog

To see the article referenced throughout the blog, click here.

Volume increases leading to service issues has become a common theme in intermodal this year, first showing up in Los Angeles before becoming prominent in Chicago. The story continues, this time in Atlanta, with a spotlight on disruptions in that region.

According to JOC, in the Atlanta market (specifically CSX Fairburn), rail speeds have decreased, containers taking more time to get grounded and carriers are waiting hours for their container & chassis.

Using DrayNow technology, we were able to gather and analyze the time spent at the rail by carriers that use our app. Our proprietary technology gives us real-time data when carriers arrive and depart the rail yard.

While we’re generally seeing higher dwell times at the rail at CSX Fairburn compared to rail yards with similar volume counts, the average time spent has not been significantly higher than past months this year. In fact, the highest ‘time at rail’ figure this year for CSX Fairburn was actually back in April, before plummeting the next month.

Both the Fairburn and Austell terminals reached their shortest dwell times in May of this year, which can most likely be attributed to lower volumes due to the ripple effects of pandemic shutdowns coming to a head. There appears to be a direct correlation at both rails with dwell times trickling up as volumes go up (along with spot rates). It’ll be interesting to see if anything changes going forward.

We’re not able to speak for any other service issues brought up in the JOC article, but our own data definitely points to higher dwell times today than some of the previous months along with increases in volume coming in and out of Fairburn.