MONTREAL (May 27) — Canadian National said it plans to spend $13 million to buy dual-mode RoadRailer trailers and use them to compete with truckers for business in the Toronto-Montreal corridor.

CN is acquiring 200 RoadRailer Mark V highway trailers and 130 RoadRailer railroad bogies for daily Toronto-Montreal service starting in early August. The railroad plans to operate dedicated terminals in the two cities.

Trains of 60 RoadRailer units will depart at 9 p.m. and arrive the next morning at 5 a.m. Train length will increase as demand warrants, CN said. RoadRailer technology, developed by Wabash National of Lafayette, Ind., can accommodate trains of up to 125 semi-trailers.

CN officials were not available yesterday to comment on how the service would be priced.

RoadRailer units function like a standard van trailer on the highway, but have special couplers and rail bogies that allow the trailers to be linked like boxcars and hauled along standard track. RoadRailers can be hauled on and off the tracks by yard tractors and do not require overhead cranes.

“RoadRailer is a proven, cost-effective bimodal technology enabling railroads to compete with over-the-road transport in corridors of 250 to 600 miles in length,” said Paul Waite, CN’s general manager of intermodal sales.

The service will also compete with Canadian Pacific’s Iron Highway, which uses a series of continuous railcar platforms, each 1200 feet long, to haul highway trailers from point to point. Trailer are simply rolled on and rolled off the platforms. Iron Highway operates between Windsor, Ont., and Montreal.

Some of Iron Highway’s primary customers are trucking companies, who book space on the trains when they otherwise cannot shuttle the freight between points themselves.

CN said it planned to take more of a retail approach with RoadRailer, marketing directly to shippers.

Like Iron Highway, however, the capacity of CN’s RoadRailer service is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of trailers moving by truck along Canada’s busiest freight lane. If all costs are equal, the reliability and flexibilty of highway travel should tip the balance.