East Central South Dakota | I have said many times..... hard to overcome our geographic position or map dot. Either the feed stock commodity or finished product is out of position in the market. The shuttle loaders brought much needed speed and space and many other customer service oriented benefits to the farmers----all of which have value. The early shuttle loaders had freight bids that were an advantage that pushed locations away from 55 cars or less locations to being a shuttle locations. Once the freight incentives built the entire grain infrastructure into shuttles, -------- you only got a shuttle bid. Rail freight for Dakota's and Western Minnesota is further complicated by the fact the BN is for all practical purposes, the only game in town. We lack the competition for grain that might make the rail freight competitive or the export market pay part of the freight with better basis. We have no cheap river freight bids, very little processing bids and very little feed yard bids and lots of piles of grain that have to go somewhere---Warren Buffet doesn't make stupid business decisions. PNW export basis reflects the fact that export supply is plentiful ( even with record export demand ), so the PNW isn't going to pay some of the freight bill by improving their basis bid------so we try to become comfortable with the fact that basis sucks and will continue to suck without processing and feed yards. Cheaper land costs and property taxes equalize the situation. So one could argue-- that if we improve basis we will just screw ourselves with higher land costs------best just to accept the bottom feeder mentality of a commodity grower and be happy. |
New Shuttle loader coming online soon SC Kansas (posted 12/26)
