I-80 Chicago to the Plains: bulk bag freight lane

What moves on the I-80 lane

Rivers, bridges and where I-80 meets other lanes

I-80 doesn't run into downtown Chicago. It skirts the south suburbs, passes Joliet and heads west through the Illinois River towns of LaSalle and Peru. The rail intermodal ramps around Joliet are where many containers come off trains and onto trucks, and a load of imported bales often starts there.

It crosses the Mississippi northeast of Davenport, between Rapids City, Illinois and Le Claire, Iowa, then the Iowa River at Iowa City. Around Des Moines it shares a roadway with I-35. At Council Bluffs it crosses the Missouri River into Omaha, and west of Lincoln it follows the Platte River valley most of the way across Nebraska.

Where the bags get filled

At the Illinois end are chemical blenders, plastics compounders and food ingredient plants, the kind that fill a few hundred bags a week with powders and pellets and need lined, spout-bottom bags that discharge clean.

Iowa grows corn and soybeans across nearly every county. Seed corn is conditioned and bagged in eastern Iowa, soybean processors crush beans for meal and oil, and ethanol plants sell dried distillers grains for feed. Fertilizer dealers take in product ahead of spring and fall. Each of these fills or empties bulk bags.

Nebraska adds cattle. Feedlots along the Platte buy mineral and supplement in bags, irrigated corn feeds the ethanol plants, and Omaha has food and meat processing. Out west of Kearney the stops get farther apart and many receivers are elevators or co-ops rather than plants.

Popcorn, oats and food-grade soybeans grow along the route too. Identity-preserved grain, kept apart from commodity grain from field to buyer, often ships in bulk bags so one lot never mixes with another, and those buyers look hard: torn stitching, a stained liner or a missing tag can get a load turned away at the receiving door.

Seed and feed for animals go in new bags. Used bags are only for non-food loads such as sand or gravel, after inspection.

One farm at a time or a trailer of bales

LTL works for the co-op that wants three pallets of bales before harvest or the seed dealer topping up between plant runs. The freight goes into a terminal at Des Moines or Omaha and comes out on a smaller truck for the last miles. Expect the delivery to need a dock or a liftgate, and tell us if the site is a gravel yard.

A full 53-foot trailer is the better buy for an ethanol plant or seed conditioner that runs bags every day. Send the bale size and pallet footprint and we work out what fills a trailer: a standard 48 x 40 in pallet loaded two across takes 636 in of trailer length / 48 in = 13 rows, so 13 x 2 = 26 floor spots, before any stacking.

Fertilizer and some bagged minerals reach the Quad Cities by barge on the Mississippi and then go out by truck, so a request may start at a river terminal rather than a plant.

Bag builds for Corn Belt plants

Seed corn is valuable and easily bruised, so many conditioners specify baffle bags that stand square, fill to a known height and sit tidily in a warehouse row. Distillers grains can turn sticky when warm and bridge in a narrow spout, so ethanol plants often prefer a wide discharge spout or a full-open bottom. Soybean meal flows freely and suits an ordinary spout bottom.

Fertilizer is abrasive and pulls moisture from damp air; coated fabric or a liner keeps it dry in a machine shed through a wet spring. Mineral supplement for Nebraska feedlots is heavy for its volume, so a bag rated at 2,000 lb SWL often reaches its weight well before it is full. Unsure what you run now? Photograph the sewn-in label on a current bag and send the picture.

Getting an I-80 request right

The fewer gaps in the first message, the sooner a carrier can look at it.

• Bag spec from the label: SWL, 5:1 or 6:1, size, top, bottom, loops, fabric, liner.
• Product: seed, feed, distillers grains, fertilizer, chemical. Food and feed bags are new bags only.
• Pickup and delivery ZIPs, and whether either end is a farm, an elevator or a plant with a dock.
• Count of bags and the date the line starts filling.
• For empties: how many, baled or loose, what they held, and whether they are clean.