Minot’s Intermodal Facility is marking a milestone – the 100th train.
"An intermodal facility is where you move containers on a unit train, and you move continuously from an inland port, which is where we are, to the ports of Tacoma and Seattle," said Minot Area Chamber CEO Brekka Kramer. She said this is different than a regular train.
"It's a full unit train," Kramer said. "It has 220 to 220 containers on each, and then it moves directly, on the BNSF rail line without stopping."
Kramer said this has allowed more and faster shipments of commodities to the west coast ports.
"The top commodities that we move out of our site include wheat, dry distiller's grains, soybeans, pulse crops like peas and lentils," Kramer said. "We have 'big lignite,' which is a borwn, soft oxidized coal, and sugar beet pulp pellets."
Kramer said another advantage of having the unit trains is they go directly to the ports, where they have “dockside service.”
"So when you see pits with containers stacked up and waiting to get on to the ocean carriers, we don't have our containers sit and wait ," Kramer said. "Ours go directly to the dock and on to the ocean carrier, which means North Dakota commodities are moving to global markets quicker, with savings as well."
The intermodal facility is at the Logistics Park in Minot. Kramer said AGT Foods is an anchor tenant there, and they’re looking for more tenants.
