SAN ANTONIO - Union Pacific Corp. expects a 20 percent increase in freight volume at its main San Antonio-area terminal this year over last, an executive from the railroad's Omaha, Neb., headquarters said Wednesday, the Express News reports.
Most of the increase at the San Antonio Intermodal Terminal, along Interstate 35 near Von Ormy, will come from higher volumes of international freight, which took a dive last year because of the global recession, said Jack Koraleski, the company's executive vice president of marketing and sales.
Domestic traffic held its own last year and will continue to do so, Koraleski said after addressing more than 200 people at the Transportation Leadership Luncheon held by the San Antonio Mobility Coalition Inc.
Union Pacific Chairman and CEO Jim Young dedicated the $100 million-plus San Antonio terminal in March 2009, after it had been operating for several months. The terminal has the equipment to transfer freight from rail to trucks and vice versa.
A portion of the local freight increase the company expects this year is parts shipments related to the production of Tacoma pickups at the Toyota assembly plant nearby in southern Bexar County. Tacoma production is scheduled to begin in late June or early July.
Koraleski said Union Pacific measured a surprise uptick in San Antonio freight volumes in December. It was not expected because Christmas retail-related deliveries occurred earlier in the fall.
The company is waiting to see if freight deliveries from China will increase after the Chinese New Year celebration, which began Sunday and lasts nearly two weeks closing factories.
Union Pacific also is awaiting completion of a new terminal near Chicago in Joliet, Ill., in August. San Antonio-Chicago shipments will be quicker, and discount rates are possible because of better efficiencies in Joliet, Koraleski said.
The railroad company employs about 1,000 workers in the San Antonio area. It's investing $2.5 billion in maintenance and improvements systemwide this year, and invested $67 million in the San Antonio area last year.
Among its more than 700 South Texas customers are Toyota, CPS Energy, the Lower Colorado River Authority, CEMEX, Martin Marietta Materials and Hanson Heidelberg Cement Group.
The top local freight categories are rock, coal, consumer-oriented freight switched between rail and trucks, automobiles and parts, cement, construction materials, food products and appliances.
(This item appeared in the Express News Feb. 17, 2010.)
