PRESS RELEASE – Deugro USA has entered into an exclusive usage agreement for a 16-axle railcar. The company will use it to transport heavy cargo via the North American railroad network, covering the USA, Canada and Mexico.

With the agreement, Deugro is now among a small team of operators managing this type of specialist railcar across all of North America, the company states.

The 16-axle railcar has the longest loading deck of all 16-axle designs (12.19m / 40ft) in North America and will be mainly deployed to transport heavy transformers, turbines, generators and other complex and over-dimensional cargoes.

The investment is part of the company’s strategy to expand its rail services. The company expects to be able to provide the market with a higher frequency of transformer transports and as well as an increase in out of gauge cargo size.

‘Due to the ageing power supply infrastructure in the USA and a rising amount of wind energy projects, we foresee an increased market need for heavy rail transportation now and in years to come’, the company explains its choice to move into rail transports. The first contract using the 16-axle railcar is already signed and will be executed in May of this year.

Compared to typical road transportation, the 16-axle railcar offers an environmentally friendly solution, provides advantages in dimension and weight restrictions and reduces the amount of time-consuming road permitting processes, Duegro states.

“Deugro’s Specialized Transport Division has successfully executed dimensional rail movements since 2015 with a noticeable recent increase in activity. This is the logical next step to combine our experience and capability with our own equipment. Having the railcar at our disposal allows us to have more flexibility to better meet our client’s needs and allows us to be able to offer a full rail package from a single source”, says Drew Roberts, senior manager of the Specialized Transport Division.