Why understand rail?
Adam Nori discusses why understanding rail is both compelling and necessary for anyone working in transportation logistics.
CITT spoke to Adam Nori, Vice President of Standard Rail, and veteran of the rail industry.
Adam says that the rail industry is a vital and complex mode – as well as deeply fascinating. If you’re new or relatively new to a role working with rail – or have professional curiosity, it’s worth taking a look.
Why learn about rail if you’re not directly involved in it?
Adam Nori:
Rail is a complex mode of transportation with intense regulatory requirements. There is a lot of procedures that stem from complexity, equipment, regulatory rules, and cross border movement. Even if you’re not working directly in rail but in an adjacent area like logistics or transportation, not understanding the ins and outs of the rail industry may get you in trouble down the road.
This is especially true if your work involves any connection to rail cars itself - if you do not have a maintenance strategy, or understand how maintenance parameters work when attempting to maintain a fleet of railcars, you could end up in a derailment situation and have an incident. In fact, one is now starting to see more of these situations in the industry today, where trains have derailed, sometimes while carrying hazardous goods. Naturally, this is becoming a significant cause for concern to populations near the derailment site.
Even for people in adjacent fields, you would need to understand rail cars, life cycle of different components and how the whole operation works. This will help you account for maintenance costs in your estimates, and ensure you stay in tune with current regulatory requirements.
What is most interesting about this from a logistics point of view? What stands out from an intellectual curiosity point of view?
Adam Nori:
The sheer size and scale of the rail industry itself is the most interesting part. Moving goods in a truck or an airplane does make up a large chunk of shipments, but the amount of scale with rail is vastly more. Rail can carry millions of tons of grains, which is something one cannot do with trucks. In fact, there are 150-200 car trains carrying grain and potash, moving from The Prairies to the port of Vancouver on a daily basis.
Speaking of the bulk vessels that leave ports to go overseas, a large chunk of those come from rail as well. The scale of the rail industry moves the economy. When there was a Union strike risk in the US a few months ago, the rail system would have come to a halt if the strike took place. If that happened, the US economy would have been affected to the tune of high billions to low trillions of dollars of output to their economy.
Without the rail network and system in place, we wouldn’t even have access to the goods and services we see every day. Bulk materials and finished products both go through the rail system before going through the rest of the supply chain to reach the end consumers.
What’s the state of change and tech in rail?
Adam Nori:
The rail industry changes and adapts very slowly. It is an industry that has been set in its way over a long period of time, be it cars, locomotives, tracks, layouts, or operations. This is not to say that the industry is not innovative - track and trace, GPS, and similar technologies are relatively new in the rail industry, and are only now starting to get some traction. The industry as a whole is relatively slow to adapt new technology, but getting there slowly.
Big railroad firms have their own mechanism to track cars. There are readers on the track that pick up where the car is, but these readers are relatively spread out and can be prone to glitches. Also, these readers are decades old technology, so now more shippers and car owners are starting to look at GPS to gain greater visibility. And it is important, because one of the main things shippers complain about is lack of visibility in the industry.
Another factor is that rail is a slower mode of transportation compared to trucking. If you are trying to go from interior Canada to Vancouver, you probably will get there faster by truck. Sometimes, a part of the railcar may be stuck in the yard, or the firm simply would not have the information about where it is, so shippers are looking at the next evolution of tech that is able to provide granular information. This may be GPS, or it may be some other technology or new sensors to help know more the product and product health.
As of now, there is not much information about the state of the goods, whether they are experiencing overheating, extreme cooling, etc. If the products are sensitive to environmental conditions, this is important information to have to ensure the goods are delivered in an appropriate state. There are different sensors for fuel level, heat, temperature, and even impact sensors. Technology that is already being used for trucking and other modes of transportation is slowly coming to rail.
What’s the opportunity for careers and advancement in rail?
Adam Nori:
The sky’s the limit in terms of opportunity in the rail space. The upcoming evolution of tech in the industry is going to create more opportunities, especially for people wanting to get into the industry at this point.
Another factor is that the current demographic in the industry skews older, which means there are lots of people nearing retirement age right now, which is also going to create a lot of opportunities.
Whether your area of interest is field work, maintenance of railcars, working with shippers and being a customer in shipping via the logistics angle, or even planning shipments – it is a really good time to get into rail.
Plus, with AI going to change the world in general, it is likely some of that will affect the rail industry too. It’s a good idea to learn now and understand what’s going on in rail today. Lots may change in the next 10 years, and the rail industry may look very different, which is a very exciting prospect!