Thanks GjM. Good info. Question since you know how this works and all I see is the rail cars flying by on the track. How do they load those up, can they leave multiple cars hooked together and have ramps betwen to drive through? I would think the cars are pretty tight inside, how do they keep the car doors from being beat to shit, are the walls padded? how many cars get scratched or crunched during load and unload?
Yes, they spot 5 railcars to each unloading pad. The prep crew opens railcar doors and installs bridge plates between railcars. They also position a buckramp at the end of the string of railcars for unloading. The vehicles are inventoried, and tickets with parking locations are match with vehicles. The unloading crew unchains, or unchocks vehicles double checking bridge plates and buckramp. They double check card and vin number then drive the vehicle to assigned parking spot.
Yes, it is cramped, but duallies and Raptors fit with about 6" clearance on each side.
The sides of the railcars have foam padding and the new vehicles have plastic door edge protectors on them. (well most of the time)
Cars used to get a lot of scratches because they used to wear coveralls with metal zippers and they would rub across the sides of the cars. People not wearing gloves would get oil and grease on the interior.
At first there were a lot of damaged and totaled vehicles. We were working off incentive from Ford to unload x amount of vehicles per shift. If we hit that number we could go home with 8 hours of pay. Needless to say, the damage claims went up and that incentive was taken away.
