CSX, Nutrien partner to improve efficiency, reduce emissions

CSX recently worked with Nutrien — a global producer and distributor of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products for agriculture and industrial use — to design a solution that reduces car handlings, congestion and greenhouse-gas emissions in Baltimore.

Nutrien’s Baltimore warehouse, located within the CSX Curtis Bay coal pier, handles two products. It receives potash by rail from a domestic distribution site and transports it by truck to local consumption points. It also receives imported urea at the warehouse and loads it onto rail cars for domestic distribution, according to a CSX press release.

In each case, CSX had two touch points for the Nutrien cars: for potash, bringing in loads and returning empties; and for urea, bringing in empties and taking out loads. This contributed to congestion at the local yard during heavy fertilizer seasons and created challenges in juggling inbound potash and outbound urea, CSX officials said.

To improve efficiency, the CSX sales and marketing team worked with Nutrien to come up with a solution that has balanced the traffic flow and reduced the need to move empty cars to and from the location, they said.

Nutrien now cleans the inbound potash cars after they are unloaded and reloads them with outbound urea. To make it work, Nutrien moves the cars for cleaning within the site using a rail-car mover and receives compensation from CSX for the cost of doing so. The elimination of empty car miles more than offsets the cost for CSX, while Nutrien benefits from improved return on investment in its shipper-owned fleet and freed up capacity, said CSX officials.

The companies are now looking at other Nutrien sites where a similar solution could be implemented.

“By creating a better balance of service to Baltimore, we have improved the supply chain in a way that’s contributing to a more fluid network with more capacity to generate new business," said Torri Stuckey, head of merchandise sales and marketing for CSX.