Odds and ends, business edition 4/1/08

When I heard Gov. Joe Manchin was going to be at the CSX office in downtown Huntington today to take part in a major jobs announcement, I had to go. So I did. Here are excerpts from his pep talk.

If people are not investing in your state, somethingt's wrong.

"If you can't attract an investment, change."

A few years ago, workers' comp was West Virginia's Achilles heel, but that has been fixed.

State government has had record surpluses. It's in better financial shape than any state bordering West Virginia, and many others, too.

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Appalachian Power has issued a request for proposals seeking long-term purchases of up to 100 megawatts of new renewable energy sources to be operational by the end of 2010.

Proposals must rely on commercially proven technologies for renewable energy, including wind, solar photovoltaic, biomass, hydro, coal mine methane, landfill gas, biogas digesters or crop residue, animal waste and woody waste.

You have assume (1) there is enough new renewable generation out there, or (2) Appalachian is going through the motions to satisfy the Green lobby. I sincerely hope it is the first.

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American railroads are finding that they are doing okay in moving bulk commodities such as coal, but freight shipments are down.

Paragraphs from the AP story:

For the first two months of 2008, the volume of intermodal rail freight in the United States was down 3.4 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the Association of American Railroads, an industry group based in Washington, D.C. Last year, intermodal traffic was flat as railroads began to feel the effects of slowing retail orders and the dollar's decline.

While shipments of store-ready consumer goods such as clothing have dipped, movement of coal, grain and ore have risen, according to the association. The latter are less sensitive to swings in the economy and help balance out the bottom line. ...

Another major rail company, CSX Corp. in Florida, said its car storage is not out of the ordinary. The company's total revenue from surface transportation was up 5 percent, from about $9.6 billion to $10 billion in 2007.

One of the nation's leading trucking companies, Schneider National in Green Bay, Wis., says it believes a freight recession began about 20 months ago, well before signs of a downturn closed in on consumers. ...

While retailers have imported less goods to be hauled by rail or truck nationwide, exports leaving Long Beach rose as the weak dollar strengthened overseas purchases of U.S. goods, Pope said. Rising export volume -- including grain and wheat shipped by rail -- helped balance falling container imports for most of last year.

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Someone's going to get some business to build new rail cars.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Following a string of train accidents in recent years, railroad tank cars carrying hazardous materials must be replaced, rebuilt stronger and travel at slower speeds over half of the nation's tracks under new federal proposals.

The Transportation Department's proposed rule requires tank cars carrying poison inhalation hazard, or PIH, commodities to be equipped with puncture-resistance protection to prevent penetration at speeds of 25 mph for side impacts and 30 mph for head-on collisions. Those speeds are more than double the limits for existing tank cars.

The proposed rule also sets a maximum speed limit of 50 mph for any train transporting a PIH tank car and a temporary speed restriction of 30 mph for cars not meeting the puncture-resistance standard that travel in non-signaled territory, or "dark" areas that comprise about half of the nation's tracks, Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Boardman said during a conference call Monday morning.

Some of the oldest PIH tank cars also will be phased out on an accelerated schedule over concerns that they do "not adequately resist the development of fractures that can lead to a catastrophic failure," according to the government proposal.

Too bad the ACF plant here in Huntington didn't make tank cars, at least not toward the end of its life. If memory serves, ACF sent that business to its plant at Milton, Pa. ACF's Huntington plant worked with the disadvantage that it was a strong union plant while the parent company owned a non-union plant in Arkansas that made the same type of covered hopper car.

I remember not that long ago when I would drive down 3rd Avenue at 3 p.m. No matter what the signal at the plant gate said, when the workers got out, they streamed across the street to their cars, and traffic had to stop. It was just a surge of humanity. But that's all in the past now.

If ACF could make these new tank cars in Huntington, that would be a significant boost to the local economy, but we bad lucked out of this one, I guess.