Rail Shipment Tracking Tips
Valuable educational information related to tracking rail shipments.
How a Rail Shipment Tracking System Can Save You Money
Having a single system that can track the locations of your rail shipments and/or railcar fleet across railroads is definitely more convenient, but does it really save you money? You may be struggling to quantify the cost benefit of a system like this. If so, please read on. Reduce Administrative...
How much does a railcar tracking software system cost (Part II)?
In February of last year, I wrote the first part of this series that focused on the cost of data, which is the core cost of any railcar tracking system. I promised that the first part would be followed up with more information about the total cost of this type...
How much does a railcar tracking system cost?
This is a very common question. The answer is a difficult one because it depends on a number of variables. This article will introduce some key questions that will help you determine how much a system will cost. If you like to be an informed buyer or are thinking about...
Getting full visibility of railcar shipments in Steelroads
If you are getting incomplete CLM (aka car location messages or sightings) data for some of your shipments and you use Steelroads*, here are some ideas that will help you increase your visibility. 1. All CLM data delivered out of Steelroads is now restricted to “Party to Waybill” (PTW) security....
Get electronic waybills from railroads for railcar tracking
Electronic waybills are delivered in a file and the information is formatted in a standard way enabling computer systems to automatically import them. Coupling sighting (CLM) data with waybill data (aka shipping instructions) can be a powerful combination. For example, not only will you know where your railcars are and...
Rail Users’ Manual
The Rail User’ Manual available from The National Industrial Transportation League (NITL) contains some basic, important, timeless, and valuable information relating to railroad railcar tracking that you may not be able to find consolidated anywhere else. The information in the manual could be more timely since the latest version that...
Getting full visibility of rail shipments
There may be situations where you want to see certain rail shipments (either in a railroad provided, third party, or in-house rail shipment tracking system), but your company is not “party to the waybill”. If you are running into this problem. Here are some options to consider. 1. You can...
Usage Cap Established For Steelroads Users
Several colleagues of mine who have sponsored Steelroads* accounts told me that today an email was sent from Railinc (creator and owner or Steelroads) informing them that the railroad sponsor of their account (more on that later) has set a cap for a certain number of trace events (CLM –...
Appending waybill elements to rail shipment tracking CLM event data may not be cost effective
If you are getting CLM event data from one of the rail industry VANs (value added networks) and they offer an option to append elements from the waybill to each CLM event record, it may seem like a simple solution, but there are numerous problems to consider first. Problem 1:...
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