Reinvigorating the northern rail line

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This article was published 03/12/2018 (2699 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the Hudson Bay Railway back up and running with service to Churchill, new ownership of the railway now has the challenge to re-imagine the business case and try to inject new freight business onto the line to make it an economically viable operation.

But in the meantime, there is also the business of reviving the supply chain of critical freight to Churchill and Nunavut communities to the North that has been forced to rely on freighter service from Montreal.

Next week, Gardewine Group, which has long been the dominant trucking firm servicing the North, will start accepting freight shipments destined for Churchill and all points serviced by air from Churchill, with weekly freight-train service from Thompson starting next Tuesday.

Darin Downey, Gardewine’s president and chief operating officer, said the trucker has been working with Arctic Gateway Group, the new owner of the rail line, to re-establish that supply chain. Among other things, he said they have decided to retain the same rates that were in place before floodwater washed out the rail line in 20 different places along the 400 kilometre stretch of rail line between Gillam and Churchill.

“We made the decision jointly along with the railway to hold the rates,” he said. “We felt it was important to show purpose and show we are serious about this.”

After a year and a half without rail service to Churchill, the first freight train arrived two weeks ago. Throughout that entire period of time, Gardewine retained staff on site assisting in air-freight operations and the occasional barge traffic.

“We’ve been working with a great bunch out of Saskatchewan (the Regina grain company, AGT, is one of the partners of the Arctic Gateway Group), to help set up rates and schedules,” Downey said.”They are busy trying to figure out the operations. We are left to figure out how to get the freight on the train.”

Terry Shaw, the executive director of the Manitoba Trucking Association, said while it may not always be obvious, trucking and rail are very complementary for shippers and it is a connection that is at play in the north.

“We see it in a very local Manitoba fashion with the relationships in northern Manitoba with carriers like Gardewine and the rail line opening up,” Shaw said.

Gardewine and Arctic Gateway are working with Nunavut Sealink and Supply Inc. with the intention of reassuming the supply chain from Winnipeg to Kivalliq rather than the Nunavut region having to rely on the lengthy shipping route from Montreal that had been servicing those communities during the rail service outage.

Downey and his team are busy reconnecting with those customers to have that service in place in time for the shipping season that typically starts in May. Gardewine has storage facilities in Churchill and sizable warehousing operations in Thompson and Winnipeg.

Although it might be the dominant player in the North there is plenty of competition in spite of — maybe even because of — a significant number of layoffs in the mining sector in the North and with more looming.

“We may be the dominant player, but I can tell you I’ve never seen so much competition in a shrinking market,” he said.

Meanwhile, the northern trucking business got a bit of relief recently after the provincial government lifted restrictions that had been in place regarding the operation of so-called “Rocky Mountain Doubles” — long-combination units with one truck pulling a 53-foot trailer with another 28-foot trailer attached — which can haul as much as 65,000 pounds.

For close to 10 years, the province had a “pilot program” in place that included time of day and frequency restrictions on the operation of those types of rigs in the North.

Shaw said the restrictions were in place for so long they started to look more like red tape than a pilot program.

“To their credit, Manitoba Infrastructure recognized that it was meeting the needs of the trucking community and northern Manitoba communities and they removed some of the operating restrictions very recently,” he said.

“There is a big push right now on efficiency, not only economic but also with the environment. Whatever we can do to use complementary modes and meet the needs of the customer, we are all for it.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca