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Smith starts rail service to Walla Walla

This story was published Dec. 21, 2002

By Jeff St. John

Herald staff writer

Smith Frozen Foods began rail shipments from Weston, Ore., to Walla Walla this month, restarting rail service on tracks that had been unused for three years.

Shipping by rail will help Smith cut transportation costs and improve quality control on loads of frozen produce from its Weston processing plant, said Mike Hachquet, logistics manager.

"When we load the cars that are going to customers, we can have a little more control of the environment," he said.

The plant used to truck its produce to distribution warehouses and then load it onto trains, he said. With the new line, refrigerator cars will travel twice a week from Weston to Walla Walla and then to Wallula, where they'll transfer to Union Pacific lines, he said.

The 30-mile rail line opened Dec. 11 and is owned by Palouse River and Coulee City Railroad Inc. The route was shut down three years ago by Blue Mountain Railroad.

Both railroads are owned by Watco Companies Inc., based in Pittsburg, Kan., which owns about 3,000 miles of shortline rail in seven states, about 400 miles of it in Washington.

Smith has a contract with Palouse to ship a certain number of cars over the line over a period of years, said Ed McKechnie, vice president of government affairs for Palouse.

Upgrading the rail line took about two months, McKechnie said. The Oregon Department of Transportation also spent about $300,000 on upgrading the line, he said.

Hachquet said he didn't have precise figures on how much Smith hopes to save with the change. Palouse spent money on improving the track, and Smith has spent money on boxcar-switching equipment at its plant, he said.

Smith produces about 160 million pounds of frozen produce a year, Hachquet said.

The company now ships about 40 million pounds a year by rail but plans to increase that to about 50 million pounds a year, he said.

"There's a lot of trucking volume to the East Coast we're working on converting to rail," he said. "The state's real interested. They want to get the trucks off the highways."