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With diesel prices — and railroad expenses — on a seemingly endless rise, rail officials continue seeking fuel-saving solutions to help keep spending in check.
Transentric and Snyder Equipment Co. March 20 announced FuelHawk, a locomotive fuel management system that could offer railroad managers just such an alternative.
The Web-based system is designed to record and control all aspects of locomotive petroleum and commodity handling.
St. Louis-based Transentric and Nixa, Mo.-based Snyder Equipment formed an alliance to market FuelHawk.
Snyder Equiment would supply locomotive servicing equipment and an electronic fuel management system designed to capture fuel data. Through Transentric’s software, FuelHawk then would collect information from Snyder-equipped fixed sites and direct-to-locomotive (DTL) vendors, and analyze the total fuel consumed by a railroad’s locomotive.
FuelHawk also is designed to track storage tank inventories, integrate optional radio frequency transponder tags on locomotives, collect fuel readings from Automatic Equipment Identification sites and on-board monitoring systems, detect fuel leaks or diesel-guzzling locomotives, furnish low-fuel warnings, and forecast fuel usage by location.
George Gagen, president of Transentric, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Corp.-owned Fenix Enterprises, believes FuelHawk would enable large railroads with fixed petroleum locations and DTL services to better control and monitor their diesel usage.
"The system also can serve smaller railroads that only use DTL services to monitor the petroleum usage of their locomotives," he said in a prepared statement.