BRAMPTON, Ont. — CN Brampton Intermodal Terminal officials say they’re taking action to address the growing line-ups at the terminal.

They issued the following message this week:

“The intent of this message today is to inform you about the current operating conditions at CN’s Brampton Intermodal Terminal. While carter turn times and gate wait times have increased in the last two weeks, it is important to highlight the fact that the facility continues to operate smoothly. There are a number of issues that have occurred of late that have contributed to the congestion that Brampton is experiencing. These issues will be highlighted below along with the corrective action that CN is taking to remedy the situation:

– higher than normal level of loaded import containers, exacerbated since the July 1st long weekend where inventories climbed to well over 2400 containers awaiting pick-up.

– high inventory of empty OSM impex boxes awaiting repositioning to western ports, due in large part to heavy import levels since the beginning of June.

– significant increase in carter activity in the terminal after the July 1st holiday, creating higher than normal demand for existing crane services. In addition, the high level of grounded inventory has increased the level of multiple lifts required to serve carters from Monday to Friday.

“To address these issues, CN continues to be focused on several key areas to ensure the productivity of the terminal, these are:

– addition of manpower to the facility
– acquisition of four mobile cranes
– realignment of the workforce to enable greater emphasis on train stripping
overnight and resulting more cranes available during the day to service carters.
– implementation of CN’s new storage policy. (Effective July 19, the charges for storage of import containers at CN’s Brampton Intermodal terminal changed as follows:
Free time: traffic deramped between 04:00 Monday and 03:59 Friday will receive two free days commencing at the next 04:00, traffic deramped between 04:00 Friday and 03:59 Monday will receive three free days commencing at the next 04:00. Rate per day for containers stored in excess of the free time will be $200 per day. (A “Day” will begin at 04:00 and end at 03:59.)

“While CN makes these improvements, there is still one area that continues to be an issue and this is related to weekend trucker activity. This lack of activity creates workflow problems every Monday which in turn escalates as the volume of imported traffic becomes a larger component of the transportation system. The gate and carter wait times at BIT on weekends and overnight are very minimal and we continue to encourage you to use the terminal during these off hours.

“Further, the gate reservation system initiated last year at BIT, has been highly successful in providing carters with fairly precise pick-up windows, which allow truckers to get into and out of the yard quickly. One important
statistic to note, however, is that the number of unused reservations has climbed – last week there were over 170 reservations booked but never used.
This leads to the terminal placing staff and resources into position for customers who do not show up. CN will be monitoring this number and ask your cooperation in ensuring that all reservations booked are used, otherwisecancelled for someone else.

“Concurrent with this communique, CN is committed to opening the channels of communication with you, our customer. Over the course of the next few weeks CN will provide you with ongoing updates on Brampton’s performance and once again republish our weekly statistics which include carter turn times, percentage of gate reservations used, average OSM dwell and OSM outgate volume. In addition, CN will be holding town hall meetings and general information sessions with the customer community.”

Clarke Trolley
Terminal Manager
Brampton Intermodal Terminal