National Grain Car Council to address harvest issues at Minneapolis meeting

The National Grain Car Council (NGCC) will meet Sept. 11 at the Radisson Blu Minneapolis hotel primarily to discuss railroads' preparedness to transport grain during the 2014 harvest.

The meeting will include remarks by Surface Transportation Board (STB) Chairman Dan Elliott III, STB Vice Chair and NGCC Co-Chair Deb Miller, and STB Commissioner Ann Begeman; a review of the upcoming harvest by Jay O'Neil, a senior agricultural economist at Kansas State University's IGP Institute; and discussions of related grain market issues among railroad, shipper and rail-car manufacturer/lessor response panels.

Established by the former Interstate Commerce Commission in 1994, the NGCC serves as a working group to facilitate private-sector solutions and recommendations to the STB on matters affecting grain-car availability and rail transportation. The council is chaired by Mike Bilovesky, vice president of marketing and sales-Ag & Minerals Business Unit for Kansas City Southern. Mark Van Cleave, senior VP of commercial sales for TrinityRail, serves as vice chair and Sharon Trudell, VP of marketing for the Red River Valley & Western Railroad, serves as secretary/treasurer.

The NGCC's more than 40 members include representatives from Class Is, regionals, short lines, rail-car lessors and manufacturers, and grain shippers and receivers.