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A privately owned freight forwarder Aug. 1 announced plans to build a warehouse and cross-dock freight distribution center adjacent to Canadian Pacific Railway's Calgary, Alberta, intermodal facility.
Construction would start after Sept. 3 and finish in March 2002 on the first phase of Consolidated Fastfrate Inc.'s (CFF) center, designed to include 10,000 square feet of offices, 60,000 square feet of warehousing and 45,000 square feet of cross-dock operations. A second phase — to be built in fall 2002 — would include an additional 73,000 square feet of warehousing and 26,000 square feet of cross-docking.
CFF, CPR, Sears Canada and Canadian Tire Corp. over the past several years developed cross-docking; CFF and the retailers receive or dispatch containers and trailers of time-sensitive, high-value freight within minutes of arriving or departing expedited CPR intermodal trains. Cross-docking is designed to eliminate potential road delays derived from trucking containers and trailers to distribution centers and sorting terminals miles away from CPR's intermodal facilities.
"Cross-docking makes these valued customers not just our neighbors, but integrated components of our key Canadian intermodal terminals," said CPR Chief Operating Officer Ed Dodge in a prepared statement. "It gives them instant and assured access to our entire transcontinental and transborder network of fast intermodal trains and services."
To accommodate cross-docking, Sears Canada built distribution centers adjacent to CPR's Vaughan intermodal terminal near Toronto and its Calgary facility; Canadian Tire recently built a 500,000-square-foot distribution center — slated to become operational in first-quarter 2002 — adjacent to CPR's Calgary terminal.
In addition to its Calgary plans, CFF operates cross-dock terminals in a former CPR Montreal facility, and near the railroad's main Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Vaughan yards. The company also operates CPR's Thunder Bay intermodal terminal.
By locating its terminals beside or within five miles of CPR's intermodal terminals, CFF plans to move shipments directly from its docks to the railroads's loading facilities over privately built roads.
CFF moves all its long-haul rail traffic on CPR under a November 1998 five-year, $130 million partnership agreement.