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Business View Magazine
intermodal terminals. “We’re the valet parkers for Union
Pacific and BNSF in the port area,” says Cliatt, modestly.
“The west-bound, intermodal container trains handle the
long haul, and once they make it to the port area they
will basically hand over the keys to PHL. We can use their
locomotives, or they can take their locomotives off and
we’ll use PHL locomotives. We take that traffic to the vari-
ous marine terminals for loading onto the ships - or the
other way around, from the ships, headed out. Then we’ll
hand it off to UP or BSNF so they can go east. We handle
the first mile and the last mile of that traffic.”
Cliatt explains the specifics of PHL’s operations on that
first and last mile of track, and beyond: “We have the
traditional manifest traffic, which is your typical boxcar,
hopper car, tank car, and automobile rack. We handle ap-
proximately 40,000 carloads, annually, on the manifest
side. And then we have the containerized traffic, which
is our primary business here in the Port. PHL handles
roughly 2.4 million containers on an annual basis. We
also handle additional business with Union Pacific, which
is the Patata, Reyes and Carson industrial leads, which
is all non-port, non-ship marine traffic – it’s all manifest
traffic”
The additional business Cliatt refers to are those com-
panies located along the Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile
freight-rail “expressway” owned by the Alameda Corridor
Transportation Authority that connects the national rail
system near downtown Los Angeles, California, to the
Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. PHL currently pro-
vides service to seven customers, six days a week, on
