The City of Prineville Railway has added a new business to its rail line and has further diversified the different commodities shipped locally by rail.
“We recently signed a contract with Ash Grove Cement Company out of the Portland area,” said Railway General Manager Matt Wiederholt. “What’s significant about this is it’s a new commodity for us. We have never hauled cement on the City of Prineville Railway before, so it’s another commodity in our book of business.”
Wiederholt explained that the diversification help to eliminate the dips in business that the railway might experience due to changes in the economy or seasonal changes in weather. For example, one of the railway’s businesses sells asphalt but since paving slows down during the colder months, the amount of asphalt shipped by rail decreases.
Ash Grove is occupying an old industrial site that was once served by rail.
“I think it’s great to see some of the old industrial (sites) starting to be utilized with rail,” Wiederholt said. “This is going to be a private industry track on Lamonta that hasn’t seen rail service since the early 1990s.”
The landowner of the property will receive a track usage fee and the railway will receive a haulage fee.
“They pay us to haul that car from Redmond to Prineville,” Wiederholt said. “Every car that comes down our line, we receive a haulage fee.”
The other advantage Wiederholt highlighted is the addition of local business competition.
“What we see with these new commodities coming online is we get a little bit of competition for the smaller businesses and customers around Central Oregon and Prineville,” he said. As an example, he pointed out that asphalt prices dropped locally after a new asphalt business opened on the railway. “I’m hoping the same thing happens with cement.”
Ash Grove’s Director of Sales and Marketing Drew Jared said the City of Prineville Railway was chosen with the hope of making access to cement more convenient in Central Oregon.
“Concrete companies that have mixer trucks need to buy cement. It’s the paste that they use to mix their concrete, so that it gets hard. When they have busy days in Central Oregon, it is a long way to haul cement from Portland, so what we are doing is we are bring cement in by railcar. It can be unloaded in Prineville, which can help concrete companies get their cement more quickly,” Jared said. “By having it locally, the idea is to turn around the loads of cement more quickly, so that concrete companies can take on more business and keep up with projects they have going on a given day.”
Jared said that Ash Grove did look at other locations throughout Central Oregon but decided that Prineville was the best fit for its rail-truck transfer.
“Matt at the Prineville railway was extremely helpful,” Jared said. “He is very innovative and came up with lots of new ideas to help us. He made is a good communicator. He made it simple.”
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