KELVINGTON, Sask. – Trains are no longer stopping at a Viterra grain elevator in eastern Saskatchewan.
As of Oct. 31, the company began trucking grain from its facility at Kelvington to elevators where it can make better use of Canadian Pacific Railway’s rail car incentive program.
A Viterra official who spoke on condition his name not be used said the plan allows Viterra to ship more through its high-volume facilities elsewhere.
Focusing rail shipments through larger facilities that can earn incentives and take advantage of blending opportunities would allow Viterra to provide more timely and efficient grain movement to farm customers, he said.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“These benefits are shared with our customers in the form of trucking premiums and grade gains. The better our overall logistics, the better deals we can offer growers.”
Breanne Feigel at CPR said it has no immediate plans to abandon the rail line on which the elevator is located and would work with Viterra to arrange for producer cars if needed.
Move questioned
The Viterra official said the grain company doesn’t plan to close the Kelvington elevator, but Lawrence Fletcher, who farms 2,000 acres northeast of Kelvington, wondered if the elevator’s days are numbered.
He doesn’t think trucking will be cheaper.
“The cheapest way to move grain is by water, then by rail. A truck is one of the most expensive ways.”
As well, he said one rail car can hold two to 2 times as much grain as a super B truck, depending on the type of grain and time of year.
Viterra’s Kelvington elevator usually ships 25 cars every two weeks.
“To ship that much grain by truck, they pretty well have to load 40 trucks a week, so that’s a truck an hour,” Fletcher said.
“At the same time they have to buy in that grain, too. There’ll be an endless lineup. There’s no way there can’t be …. I can’t say it won’t work. I just can’t see it working as good as it does now.”
Stan Elmy, who farms 1,800 acres northeast of Kelvington, said he’s concerned about the effect on the roads.
“They bring 25 cars in here and they load approximately 4,000 bushels in a car so 25 cars would be like 50 trucks going out of here, so it’s just a lot of traffic,” he said.
Traffic regulations allow big trucks to travel up to 15 kilometres on a secondary highway to access a primary highway.
To comply with this requirement, trucks leaving Kelvington travel eight km on a municipal grid road before getting back on the secondary highway15 km from its junction with a primary highway.
