![]() ![]() ![]() Is there a way to reduce this cost – yes. On the low side, taking the initial delivery, setting it up and then relocating it just one time puts us at $18,000.00 That same $6,000.00 to $8,000.00 has to now be spent twice more – once to take the unit apart and load on a flat bed and again to unload and re-assemble the unit at the new site. Cost to do the job vary around the country, but discussions with multiple clients puts the range from $6,000.00 to $8,000.00. More cost now come if/when you are ready to move the unit to another location. On arrival additional money must be spent to now assemble the unit at site, requiring a fork lift and or boom truck to unload the unit and lift the equipment onto the mobile trailer, man lift, associated tools, sometimes generator power, 2-3 man crew. Because the platform is fixed to a trailer and the height exceeds the 13’-6” DOT height restriction for shipping down the road, the transload unit, and its platform must be shipped on a flatbed truck to the job site. However, let’s look at where the additional cost of ownership, above and beyond that of the actual transload unit, can increases when it’s time to move the unit to another site and how we can minimize it.įrom the day the transload unit leaves the factory, the cost to move the unit begins. ![]() The fixed platform with stair unit, that the gangway and safety cage is mounted to, used to get on top of the car, is bolted to a trailer and moved around a yard from car to car and typically pulled by a heavy duty truck. The transload unit will also have equipment such as pumps, compressors, controls and meters used for loading or unloading. This is a common setup used to load or offload between rail cars and trucks where top access is required to open domes for filling and or venting, connect hoses or insert loading arms. The need to move into the market quickly once contracts are negotiated has remained consistent, and the need to utilize the asset at multiple sites is increasing, with moving the mobile transloader an area that can be costly and a logistics challenge.įor this discussion, we will assume this is a mobile transload unit with a fixed platform and stair, and uses a gangway with safety cage for safe access and fall protection. The railroad also anticipated an annual net profit of $487,500 from the facility at the time.There is an increasing demand to utilize mobile transloading units to move products like propane, butane, crude oil, condensates, ethanol, bio-diesel and refined fuels all over the USA and Mexico, between rail cars and trucks. In 2013, a railroad official said Grafton & Upton expected the transfer yard to operate at a capacity of about 1,500 cars per year during the first two years of operation. The town has been fighting the project for more than three years. Propane is in demand, and that is why the railroad is constructing this facility - to bring a product to market that is in demand.” “It is a clean-burning, efficient fuel that is used more and more. “Grafton & Upton has always met and exceeded all safety requirements, and this project will be no different,” he said. Pizzi said that analysis is being reviewed by the state fire marshal’s office. In August, selectmen voted to hire a safety consulting firm to evaluate the fire safety analysis submitted by Grafton & Upton for the site. He said the company still has to complete construction of the necessary infrastructure before the transloading rail yard can open. “We will now work to bring this much needed domestic energy to market to satisfy the growing demand.”Ĭalls to officials from Grafton were not immediately returned.ĭoug Pizzi, a spokesman for Grafton & Upton, said four 80,000-gallon propane storage tanks are in place at the site for storing 320,000 gallons of propane. “I’m extremely happy with this decision, which affirms what the railroad has been saying all along, that the town would have been better off working with us than spending three years and hundreds of thousands of tax dollars fighting this matter legally,” Grafton & Upton owner Jon Delli Priscoli said in a statement. ![]() The decision comes a little more than a year after Grafton officials appealed the federal Surface Transportation Board’s decision in favor of the railroad.īarring an appeal, the Grafton & Upton Railroad can now build and operate its facility for transferring the fuel from rail to ground transportation at its North Grafton rail yard, 42 Westboro Road. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday in support of a federal panel’s earlier decision to allow the Grafton & Upton Railroad to move forward with its proposed liquid propane gas transfer yard in North Grafton. GRAFTON – A three-judge panel of the U.S. ![]()
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