Container trucking turn-around times expected to improve at CP Rail’s Chicago yard thanks to new chassis location

Story from Ari Ashe for Journal of Commerce

A new location for chassis at Canadian Pacific Railway’s Bensenville, Ill., container rail yard near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is expected to speed up trucker’s turn-around times, in hopes of alleviating a major headache in recent months.

CP Railway is a major provider of inland container service for many Specialty Soya & Grains Alliance (SSGA) members shipping ag products by containers to the West Coast or Montreal for export. CP provides intermodal service for the region from its Chicago and Minneapolis yards, and even east to Ohio.

The new chassis location at Bensenville will be located inside the DNJ Internodal Depot, which is inside CP’s property and close to the terminal’s ingates. It will hold chassis for three chassis pools.

The huge volume of containers moving to and through Chicago, coupled with different systems and recent changes at different railroads’ container operations, have led to recent chronic shortages of chassis needed to move the container between terminals and customers. Chassis availability has been an issue at Union Pacific, BNSF and Canadian National Chicago intermodal operations as well.

Click here for more detailed coverage of chassis issues and developments at Chicago.

CP Railway also has plans for expanding its undersized intermodal container facility at Shoreham Heights in Minneapolis, where trucking congestion and delays have plagued area roads and traffic leading to and from the facility.