Expansion of railroad tracks at Goldsboro Milling complete
By From staff reports
Published in News on August 23, 2012 1:46 PM
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Photo courtesy Goldsboro Milling Co.
This view shows the expanded track layout at the feed mill at Goldsboro Milling Co. off Miller's Chapel Road.
Goldsboro Milling Co. is putting the final touches on a rail track expansion at a cost of approximately $5 million.
Goldsboro is served by the Norfolk Southern Railroad, and the railroad has gone to a 75-car unit train program.
The previous train size was 50 cars, but to take advantage of Norfolk Southern's cheapest freight rates, customers must be able to handle 75 car trains.
Track capacity increased from 72 cars up to 151 cars with the expansion at Mill No. 2.
Goldsboro Milling, which manufactures feed for its hogs and turkeys, is now making about 20,000 tons per week of finished feed, made mostly of corn, wheat and soybean meal.
The company is able to buy about 50 percent of its grain needs from local farmers, but approximately 50 percent of these ingredients come in by rail from Indiana and Ohio. That amounts to about 90 cars per week, or about 4,700 rail cars annually.
The new track expansion will allow Goldsboro to unload 75 cars in 24 hours or less, which is what is required to avoid detention charges by the railroad.
In addition, the new expansion includes a new truck unloading pit and elevator. This will allow the company to unload 50 percent more trucks per hour, going from eight trucks to 12 in addition to the six at Mill No. 1, for a total of 18 trucks per hour or about 250,000 bushels in 14 hours.
There is also a new receiving office included in the project, which houses the computers that control and route the whole receiving process until the ingredient reaches its final destination in the mill.
The project started in late fall of last year and is totally complete and operational this week.