WINNIPEG — It’s time to bring port pooling to an end, say the people who handle and haul prairie grain.
Grain companies and railways want to do away with the system under which Canadian Wheat Board grain can be delivered to any terminal when it arrives at export position.
They say while pooling was once a good idea that made for easier operations at the ports, especially Vancouver, that’s no longer the case.
“De-pooling is certainly an efficiency step that could be taken,” said CN Rail vice-president Sandi Mielitz.
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The fate of pooling is part of the negotiations going on among grain companies, the railways and the wheat board on exactly how the new handling and transportation system will operate.
Those discussions, which were to have brought new rules into place by Aug. 1, have been bogged down by disagreements between the grain companies and the wheat board over how rail cars should be distributed and moved to port.
Grain company officials say pooling made sense back in the days when most grain originated on branch lines, but that’s no longer the case.
Back in the old days, a few cars would be picked up from a large number of elevators, resulting in trains carrying a wide mixture of grains.
Directing those individual cars to specific terminals entailed time-consuming and expensive switching at railyards, either on the Prairies or at port, so a system was devised under which the cars were pooled and sent to the most convenient terminal for unloading.
The accounts were balanced out on a monthly basis to ensure all the terminal operators got their fair share of the business.
Things have changed, said Gordon Cummings, chief executive officer of Agricore.
Now, with many grain trains being loaded at one or two high volume terminals on the Prairies, they can be earmarked to specific terminals at the port to meet specific sales. In essence, switching that was once done at the port is now being done back in the country.
“If we’re going to have the world’s most efficient and cost-effective system, it clearly can’t be by having a whole bunch of cars inter-switched in yards both on the Prairies and in Vancouver,” he said.
“With so many fewer elevators, in our minds de-pooling and handling your own grain makes sense.”
Adrian Measner, the wheat board’s executive vice-president for marketing, said the board thinks there are still benefits from pooling, but also recognizes the need may change as the system changes.
“We need to see a little more information on why the railways think there’s not the benefit there now before we would agree it shouldn’t exist,” said Measner.
Mielitz said eliminating pooling would increase accountability in the system, which was one of the federal government’s major goals in reforming the system.
The railways would like a system where a terminal operator would authorize the loading of grain in the country, and then the shipper, railways and terminal would monitor the train through the system.
“If we all watch the grain all the way from the country to Vancouver and we can plan how to unload that grain, that increases efficiency and accountability,” she said.
