TRACKS were chosen over trucks this harvest by Milguy grower, Stuart Tighe, “Boolah”, who sent 6000 tonnes of chickpeas directly to port via train.
Mr Tighe runs a large scale cropping enterprise and sells his produce to both domestic and export markets.
With a good amount of winter and in-crop rainfall this season, Mr Tighe was able to fill a contract for 6000 tonnes of chickpeas which was destined for export through Newcastle Agri Terminal.
If Mr Tighe had used the normal trucking system to deliver the chickpeas to Newcastle, it would have taken 140 B-Doubles to transport the order.
To get that quantity to port by the end of November in trucks would have been near impossible
- Stuart Tighe, "Boolah", Milguy
Instead, Mr Tighe contracted two 838 metre trains, consisting of 48 wagons which could hold 57t of chickpeas each (about 3000t per train).
The trains were loaded with a customized grain tubeveyor that Mr Tighe said was about 30 per cent higher in capacity than what he would normally use at harvest.
The tubeveyor would load chickpeas from the chaser bin into the train wagons at 600t per hour, taking only between seven to eight and a half hours to completely load a train.
The chickpeas are moved from the chaser bin via a standard tubeveyor belt like most on the market, however Mr Tighe said it was a much larger machine than usual that’s operated by a radio remote control.
Mr Tighe said having the train loaded quickly was essential to keeping the operation economically viable, which was successful due to the larger tubeveyor.
Executing his contract quickly was also important for Mr Tighe, which is why he decided to use Australian rail instead of the roads.
“Using the trains allowed us to hit certain contracts in a timely fashion,” he said.
“To get that quantity to port by the end of November in trucks would have been near impossible.”
Using the train dramatically lowered freight costs for Mr Tighe, he said by at least $5 a tonne.
“With one wagon loaded roughly every 6 minutes without additional loading or handling in between, and leveraging our own on-farm storage, our supply chain costs have been dramatically lowered for this delivery,” he said.
