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...

Car Location Message (CLM) Event Sighting Codes

  Code Classification Description A Arrival Transit Location Equipment has arrived at an in-transit railroad location other than the destination. B Bad Order Equipment has been reported or received defective at location shown. See this article for extended bad order information. C Motor Carrier Arrival Motor carrier arrival at initial...

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....

Cost increases coming soon for rail shipment tracking data?

Most Class I railroads have a practice of providing shipment tracking data such as CLM (car location messages) and waybills (EDI 417 format) to those directly involved in rail shipping for no charge. The practice of doing the same for third parties (VANs – value added networks, on-demand software vendors)...

The misunderstood Train ID field

Actually, if it were understood better, we would realize that this little field is actually providing some pretty rich information. Most Car Location Message (CLM) formats contain a Train ID field. This field returns several very different types of information depending on the situation. Frustrating and difficult to implement in...

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:...

Learning Center Categories

Railcar Fleet Management

Reduce Demurrage Bills

railcar-tracking-3

Expanded Reporting Features