Essex Terminal Railway

While ETR and Mortem’s attention to detail regarding their customers is a big part of their continued success, there are several other factors. Mortem understands that truck freight literally drives the industry—most cargo companies in the industry, like ETR/Morterm handle go-to destinations not directly located on a rail line or accessible by ship. Focusing on the needs and tight time constraints of truck drivers, both delivering and receiving freight from Morterm, has provided the company with great results.

“By respecting the truckers need to be in and out as quickly as possible, we are able to keep them happy, their dispatchers happy and our customers happy. It also means that truckers don’t mind coming here; in fact some even look forward to it!”

Long-term success like ETR/Mortem doesn’t come without challenges. What proves these companies’ standings however, is how they handle these challenges and move forward with the solutions.

For example, finding and retaining skilled staff can be incredibly difficult due to the nature and environment of the industry. Marine terminals in the Great Lakes can’t accept vessels for about three months of the year because the St. Lawrence Seaway closes from the end of December until generally the beginning of April due to ice conditions in the Lakes. Morterm is a 12-month operation with the ability to receive cargo by truck and by rail as well as by vessel, but typically the winter months see industry-wide layoffs. The ETR runs seven days a week, 12 months a year but employment levels at both companies are largely driven by the amount of freight at any given time. To overcome staffing challenges, ETR/Morterm work hard to provide opportunities for growth and advancement for its employees.

Other challenges come in the form of the regulatory environment in which ETR/Morterm operate—specifically in terms of safety and security. Rapid changes to legislation and strict rules for compliance, while necessary for the prevention of injury, incident, and cargo theft, create a regulatory burden and increased costs to the companies. Companies like ETR/Morterm are forced to invest heavily in terms of manpower to stay on top of legislative and regulatory changes and need a dedicated team member (or members) to manage. However, it means companies involved in logistics have to invest heavily in staying on top of the legislation. The most recent overhaul has been the Safety Management System, which will enable the railway to demonstrate, in a concrete and visible manner, its commitment to safety to its employees, customers and the public and will help railways ensure compliance to regulatory environments. At the ETR, Ed Clough, the company’s rail superintendent, dedicates a great deal of his time to these efforts.

Construction on North America’s Busiest Rail Crossing

Most companies wouldn’t relish the idea of repairing a broken rail in the highest traffic-volume rail crossing, located at the foot of the busiest international crossing for trade in North America (the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, which routinely handles $300 million in trade per day; 25 per cent of all commercial volume between Canada and the US; and over 10,000 commercial vehicles per day) and having to shut down traffic two weekends in a row. With frequent freeze-thaw-freeze cycles through the winter and hot, humid weather in the summer, a piece of the rail in the crossing had split and needed to be replaced to ensure against any danger of derailment. The ETR was up for the challenge and worked with partners OWS Railroad Construction and Maintenance and London Trackwork to complete the repair and deploy the first installation of their Icosit technology in North America.

Sika Icosit KC 340 is a two-pack Polyurethane grout for rail fixing and is a flexible two-component polymer grout based on polyurethane resin, which is hand and machine applicable. In layman’s terms, it creates a load-bearing, flexible levelling grout for the elastic fixing of grooved rail, creating a floating surface for rails. This is invaluable for weather changes that cause the rail and surrounding material to expand or contract, as well as for the volume of traffic this particular crossing sees on a daily basis.

London Trackwork President Geoffrey Richey and Vice President Charles Richey, the developers of the new technology, were on hand to witness and ensure the success of this once-in-a-lifetime repair. “The hard work, dedication, planning, and efficiency of the team responsible for the repair ensured that the project was done not only on time, but both weekends, the road was open to vehicular traffic earlier than anticipated,” said Pringle. “The entire operation was a sight to behold and something we won’t see again in our lifetime—we hope!”

Technological Innovations

Morterm has developed a proprietary terminal inventory management software—fondly referred to as TIMS—to manage its customers’ incoming and outgoing inventory. Users of the Terminal are able to log in 24/7 with unique usernames and passwords and view customer reports such as inventory on hand, orders placed or pending, and loads of material inbound and outbound. The specially built software program is unique to Morterm and acts as a differentiator from their competition.

The company’s most recent purchase, a $500,000 investment into a Kone 70,000lb forklift, will help Morterm improve efficiencies and time required for maintenance. The machine is extremely user-friendly, intuitive, and flexible, allowing a single operator to change the attachments from forks to a ram in under five minutes. Typically, a change like this would need three men for an hour. The size of the machine is also deceiving—it carries the payload of a machine twice its size.

“As a smaller, privately-owned company, we are able to be agile and also benefit from watching the larger Class 1 Railways invest in research and development, and then follow the technological trends and deploy quickly,” shared Pringle. “In terms of shipping everything is moving at a rapid pace in technology—we continue to monitor and evaluate where we should upgrade and invest.”

What’s Next?

While the ever-growing logistics and shipping industry evolves towards a tighter regulatory environment, ETR and Morterm aim to be key players in moving North-American destined freight from the EU, especially into the Greater Toronto Area and Midwest U.S. manufacturing regions.

“It will take focus and time to establish ourselves as a player in that market,” Pringle mentioned. “Our companies will have to approach each segment separately—the freight can be booked directly by the customer, by the manufacturer, or producer, by a shipping company or by a third-party logistics provider. Each market segment requires a strategy, market development, and business development as well as developing the niche position for the company.”