BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - CSX's new $6 million hub in Bessemer already is strengthening the link between Mercedes-Benz's operations in Vance and Germany. Now, officials with the railroad company are out to lay tracks to other businesses in the state, according to the Birmingham News.
The official opening of the Central Alabama Intermodal Container Transfer Facility, as CSX calls it, was held Tuesday with fanfare that included music from members of the Jess Lanier High School marching band.
The facility began operating in September in the Interstate Industrial Park off Fifth Avenue, the same complex that once housed the Pullman rail car plant, a fact not lost on Clarence Gooden, executive vice president and chief commercial officer for Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX.
"If you pause and reflect for just a moment about where we are physically, you can see the past and you can see the future," Gooden said. "Just behind us here is the old Pullman manufacturing center where they built rail cars and the Pullman Standard sleeper cars. A lot of history was here in the '20s and the '30s."
Intermodal hubs -- which transfer shipping containers between rail cars and trucks -- is not only the railroad company's future, but also the future of logistics, Gooden said.
"This is how tomorrow will move -- in containers and rapidly being able to get them off of highways," he said.
Right now, those containers move to and from the Mercedes plant in Vance, which is the only place in the world that produces the M-Class, GL-Class and R-Class line of vehicles for the German automaker.
Jason Hoff, vice president of purchasing and logistics at the Mercedes-Benz plant, said vital components for the vehicles made in Vance come packed in the containers handled by the Bessemer facility.
"All of our commodities that come out of Europe -- which are mostly our engines and transmissions -- will come through here," Hoff said.
Jim Carnes, assistant manager of material supply purchasing and logistics at the Vance plant, said each container can hold about 216 transmissions, or 72 engines. He said the plant also returns the packaging for the engines and transmissions to Germany along with some finished parts that are used for repairs or after-market additions by Mercedes owners in Europe.
"Right now, we're moving about 90 containers in-bound a week and about 100 out-bound a week," Carnes said.
The Bessemer facility operates on 25 acres and there is an option to develop an additional 25 acres. A company that contracts with CSX leases the facility.
The hub has 5,000 feet of working track and parking for 1,000 stacked 40-foot containers and 307 40-foot containers on truck chassis ready for trucks to hook and haul. It can handle two trains per day (one in-bound and one out-bound) and move up to 40,000 containers annually.
CSX said initial demand at the facility should be about 10,000 to 15,000 containers per year, but the company is pursuing more business.
"We're already talking about ways we can expand this facility," Gooden said. That includes looking beyond customers that use the ports in Charleston and Savannah, he said.
"We're looking at the Port of Mobile and we're looking at possibly moving things in and out of Chicago," he said.
