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Published on: 10/5/2006
Last Visited: 10/5/2006
Matt Clarke, president and chief executive officer of Gross & Janes, points out that this year has been one of the heaviest years in recent memory for not only demand, but also supply.
Clarke notes that as business has improved over the past few years, Gross & Janes has looked at a variety of potential products and processes to add value for its customers, including investing heavily in plant infrastructure, working on the introduction of crosstie-related maintenance products to assist its customers in reducing the life-cycle costs of ties in track and initiating research into the commercial application and feasibility of sterilizing material prior to shipment.
"In 2004 and 2005, we witnessed a slowing lumber market and increasing tie market.Producing sawmills moved tie production further up their list of priorities, heavily increasing production for the past 18 months.To that, we had the additional availability of logs in hurricane regions and at least two dry winters in the Midwest, which all added up to some of the heaviest production seen in a number of years.Tie inventories for the railroads have built rapidly throughout 2006 (especially with short work windows due to high traffic volumes), finally to the level they have been seeking for some time," said Clarke.
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All sectors of the industry have seemingly turned the corner on their rates of return and are putting their investments heaviest to infrastructure to ‘keep the trains running.' We have seen a ramp up since 2004, culminating in what has been a robust 2006, to date," said Clarke.