RENO, Nevada – U.S. grain shippers are looking to Roberts Bank as a possible outlet for American grain exports.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and Cargill Ltd. recently announced plans to build a state-of-the-art grain handling facility at Roberts Bank, part of the port of Vancouver.
The $175 million terminal would be capable of handling three to four million tonnes of grain a year.
Roberts Bank is served directly by Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a U.S. rail company that dominates the grain hauling business in northern Great Plains states like Montana and North Dakota, and reaches to Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
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Philip Weaver, BNSF’s vice-president of agricultural commodities, said last week that while the Roberts Bank facility is being designed primarily to handle Canadian grain, there’s no reason some U.S. grain couldn’t move through the new plant.
North route logical
He said the company has had no discussions with either of the partners in the terminal project, but expects that will eventually happen.
“It just seems that it’s logical,” he said.
BNSF operated a 35,000-car fleet last year, hauling a record 663,000 carloads of agricultural commodities. Wheat accounted for 33 percent of the total, followed by corn at 31 percent.
Weaver said his ideal vision of the future would be a rail transportation system that knows no international boundaries, with grain flowing freely between Canada and the U.S.
“That’s where I think the market’s ultimately going to go and what’s going to force that is trucks,” he said.
Railroads may say they don’t want to provide service in a certain area or haul a certain product, but trucks will take it where it wants to go, he said.
“They are a great impetus for innovation with railroads,” he said, adding that BNSF is ready to haul any Canadian grain that comes its way.
