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Railroads of Kansas City & What You Need to Know for Drayage

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The Kansas City Region has four main railroad ramps. The Kansas City Southern Ramp in Grandview, the Union Pacific Railroad Neff Yard off Gardner Ave, the Norfolk Southern Railroad off Kimball Dr, and the BNSF LPKC yard in Edgerton Kansas.


By terry cantrell - originally posted to Flickr as IMG_2455, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3831131


The KCS Rail Yard - The KCS rail yard is located off 150 hwy in Grandview, MO. KCS Increasingly is accepting MSC containers as the BNSF LPKC rail yard has become somewhat congested. KCS is a drop ramp meaning drayage carriers drop the container on a chassis at the yard when delivering a load. The distance from the industrial core of Kansas City may increase the rate of intermodal drayage of a load to or from the KCS rail, however the Grandview area is increasingly growing with warehousing being built constantly. KCS does not have an easy to operate website for dray carriers but is easy to use for shippers and receivers.

By Flickr user Tyler Silvest Wikideas1 (talk) 21:43, 7 November 2016 (UTC) - Here, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55213010


UPRR - located off Gardner Ave in Kansas City, MO. The UP Neff yard is also a drop yard. They accept loads with a lot of Steamships including the following: Ocean Network Express, CMA, APL. The Neff yard also allows for outgate of bare chassis which can be used to pickup containers at close proximity container depots. The UPRR Neff yard's location near the industrial districts of Kansas City coupled with the ability to drop containers there for delivery, typically gives a lower drayage rate for this facility as it is close in proximity, easy to work with and fast to go in and out of. UPRR's application and website myuprr.com is extremely easy to use and navigate and allows users to save waybill inquiry's for later use.



BNSF LPKC - The LPKC rail yard is a blessing and a curse for intermodal drayage. On one hand the rail yard accepts a wide variety of containers ( CMA, COSCO, EVERGREEN, MAERSK, MSC, Yang Ming, OOCL) but you can also pickup empties at LPKC. The yard is a combination Drop Yard/Lift Yard. Some loads a driver can pull in, drop the load at a designated spot then pickup another bare chassis or container, other loads the driver may spend 30-45 minutes waiting to have the container lifted off them. The yard is located in Edgerton, KS about 45 minutes outside of the main industrial districts of Kansas City. The positive to this location is warehousing is going up everywhere in edgerton, gardner and olathe. Due to this yards location and tendency to take longer to ingate and outgate the rate is typically higher than UPRR since it consumes more fuel and time. The BNSF customer portal has many helpful apps, is easy to use and provides a great deal of information.


Norfolk Southern - The Norfolk Southern rail yard located off of Kimball Rd in Kansas City, MO accepts a variety of steamship container lines including but not limited to Ocean Network Express, Yang Ming, Hapag Lloyd and several others. This container yard has a good location close to major industrial areas and warehouses, however, the rail yard's major drawback is they do not allow dropping of equipment and require every driver to have their container lifted and drop the chassis at a different container yard. They can become extremely busy resulting in drivers being stuck at the yard for up to two hours. The disposal of the chassis, lack of being able to pickup empties at this location, paired with occasional long waits to be lifted make this rail yard's rates typically rival that of BNSF LPKC. Norfolk Southern's website and mobile app AccessNS are easy to navigate and operate however they use odd railbilling acronyms that can be confusing to someone who is not accustomed to using this application.






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