TexAmericas Center has finalized a contract with Spring Creek Enterprises (SCE) to operate a new bulk load Transload Facility at TexAmericas Center that will serve the greater Texarkana and Four States region. The facility will employ a rail-to-truck transloading process that will be used primarily for the transport of bulk items such as metal, timber, construction materials, aggregate, consumer products and building products. With additional investment the facility will be able to accommodate agriculture products, liquids and fuels.
The facility will initially have 10 acres of dedicated outside storage but will be expandable. TAC and SCE are currently working through the design phase of retrofitting an existing 22,000sf warehouse to support transload facility. The warehouse is one of 12 buildings in TexAmericas Center recently announced 270,000sf rail-served, warehouse and light manufacturing redevelopment project. As with many other projects, TexAmericas Center and SCE have undertaken, this one requires a very quick turnaround to allow for operations to begin in 2019.
The new SCE Transload Facility at TexAmericas Center is located just off Interstate 30 about 15-miles west of Texarkana, and “will facilitate the seamless transportation of goods and materials in the Texarkana area,” said Michael Stringer, owner of Spring Creek Enterprises. “With the establishment of this transload facility, businesses no longer need to be located along the railroad to be railroad customers. The TexAmericas Center location will be one of the closest public transload facilities for companies located between Dallas and Little Rock. With a capacity of 12 railcars, the facility will also offer a laydown area for products to be stored on-site. Indoor warehousing space is also available. A truck scale is conveniently located less than a mile from the site. Customers may also use the new facility to distribute bulk products among their own local storefronts and sales centers, allowing them to take advantage of the benefits of bulk rail shipping without having their own rail-served location.”
TexAmericas Center is directly served by the Texas and Northeastern Railroad (TNER) which pulls out of the Union Pacific (UP) yard located in downtown Texarkana less than 15-miles away. Rail car storage is available on the TexAmericas Center footprint as TexAmericas Center owns over 30 miles of rail including a 250+ rail car storage yard.
Eric Voyles, Executive Vice President at TexAmericas Center said, “The SCE Transload Facility, “can be used to handle virtually all commodities shipped by rail or truck, including metal, timber, or lumber. SCE will arrange to unload railcars for customers at this location. Planned improvements, will allow for plastics, grain and other in demand items to be handled such as coal, gravel, road salt, or cement. A pricing estimate can be developed with as little as four pieces of information: 1) type of product, 2) number of truck loads to be moved, 3) origination location, and 4) destination location.”
Why Transload?
- No need to invest in track, warehouses for storage and transloading equipment
- Reduce your truck shipping miles
- Increase your market reach
- Ship across borders seamlessly
- Rely on shipping experts
- Ship more, spend less
- Adapt as your business grows
Transloading — Step by Step
Depending on whether your origin or destination has rail service, transloading can happen a few different ways, but here’s a basic example:
- Products are loaded onto a truck.
- The truck transports the products to a transload facility.
- At the transload facility, products are transferred to a rail car.
- The product type determines how it is transferred (e.g., pump, crane or forklift) and to which type of rail car (e.g., tank car, flat car or boxcar).
- A railroad company transports the car to a railhead.
6. If needed, products are transferred back to trucks for final delivery at another transload facility.
Services Spring Creek Enterprises will provide
SCE’s transloading capabilities feature full access to the rail for metals, timber, building materials, sand, aggregate, pipe, liquids & gasses, merchandise, plastics, pulp & paper, and a host of other commodities. Hazardous Material items may be possible after appropriate due diligence. There is ample room to transfer products to or from the rail, to and from a lay-down yard or to and from existing cross-dock, storage buildings.
Services and equipment available:
- Locomotive/switch engine
- Car storage
- Hardstand/Laydown yard
- Warehousing and managing customers stored inventory
- Kitting
- Cross-docking
- Reloading
- TL/LTL distribution services
- Scale
- Fork Lifts
- Portable Ramps & Docks
- Material Handling Equipment
- Heavy and over-dimensioned Equipment and Vehicles
- 24/7 service delivery capable
- Don’t see what you need – Please ask…
Full Scope and Scale of the Transload Facility Project
TexAmericas Center identified this 20-acre site in 2013 as a rock transload operation to support improvements to US Highway 82. TexAmericas Center fielded many calls over the next five years from companies seeking to contract the use of this logistics service. TexAmericas Center lacked the equipment to provide the service. In 2018, SCE contacted TexAmericas Center looking for a temporary location to perform a transload operation for a customer. An outline of partnership quickly formed. SCE leased 10-acres of the original site and has optioned an additional five acres all dedicated to transload facility operations. Initially, SCE will have the ability to transload up to 12 cars at a time on a single track. Upon the operation proving to be successful, TexAmericas Center has identified a 45-acre location on its East Campus where the transload capacity could grow to have the capacity to transload over 50 railcars on up to seven separate tracks. Preliminary plans Page | 3
also call for warehousing adjacent to the modern transloading facility. The warehouse will likely encompass approximately 40,000 square feet and have its own rail spur capable of unloading from railcars into the building.
Services TexAmericas Center will provide
TexAmericas Center is a full service industrial real estate developer and manager. TexAmericas Center can build, lease, manage, and sell facilities as well as provide access to incentives. With 36- miles of rail, over 12,000 acres, and 3,000,000sf of industrial, office, flex, warehouse, manufacturing and specialty use space, TexAmericas Center is one of the largest industrial parks in North America. TexAmericas Center will be the developer of the expanded 45-acre transload facility as well as an adjacent 250-acre rail served Brazos Industrial Park. Services to be provided include:
- Survey & Construction Plans
- Provide topographic and boundary survey of lots.
- Site/civil design for ground purchase and build to suit lease or turnkey projects. Sites available near the planned expanded rail car transload facility include: Engineering Site Plan, Grading & Drainage Plan, Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, Water & Waste Water Plan and other civil site development plans as may be required to serve project needs.
- Coordinated project design review with TNER, Lone Star Rail Car Storage, SCE and TexAmericas Center for final approval.
Bid Phase Services
- TexAmericas Center will prepare bid documents and solicit pricing for construction from qualified site and rail contractors for the proposed rail car transload development.
- Tabulation of bids and coordination with SCE and client on contractor selection.
Construction Administration
- Review shop drawings and submittals.
- Provide onsite construction observation during key phases of construction.
TexAmericas Center applied for an EDA infrastructure assistance grant in 2017. With these funds, TexAmericas Center has extended all infrastructure, except gas, adjacent to the temporary Transload Facility, the Brazos site, and the 270,000sf rail-served cross-dock warehouse complex. Only Gas remains to be extended but is within 1 mile of the sites. TexAmericas Center is pursuing additional EDA grants to garner funding for studying needed rail improvements and making additional infrastructure upgrades.
About Spring Creek Holdings, LLC
Spring Creek Holdings LLC, DBA Spring Creek Enterprises, is headquartered in Atlanta, TX. Spring Creek Holdings’ operational background is in bulk handling, trucking, forestry & timber. Established in 2006, Spring Creek Enterprises operates round wood storage facilities, and historically offers a variety services via both forestry & construction equipment from log loaders, log trucks & trailers, Dump Trucks, backhoes, track hoes, small cranes, and a variety of forklifts, man lifts, bucket trucks, industrial power washers and more. Safety is important to Spring Creek Enterprises as employees are OSHA trained. SCE is a client of ISNetworld.
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Michael Stringer, President at (903) 824-0476 or email at mstringer@springcreekholdingsllc.com.
About TexAmericas Center
Located in the Texarkana metropolitan area, TexAmericas Center owns and operates one of the largest mixed-use industrial parks in the United States. With roughly 12,000 development-ready acres of land and about 3 million square feet of commercial and industrial product, TexAmericas Center services the four states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) markets. TexAmericas Center is a designated HUBZone, New Market Tax Credit Census Tract, and Foreign Tarde Zone #258. Texas is the #1 state for business in the United States of America because of its regulatory environment, tax policies, and workforce quality along with exceptional educational resources, infrastructure, and quality of living. Founded in 1997, TexAmericas Center has the operating capabilities of a municipality but functions more like a traditional real estate development company, offering customized real estate solutions. In addition to controlling our own zoning and permitting processes and sustaining the life cycle of public infrastructure on the complex, TAC has the capability to lease, build-to-suit, or facilitate Greenfield owner-constructed projects in a timely and efficient manner. At TAC, we streamline leasing and manage government development processes all through a single point of contact. Our customers benefit from faster market entry by resolving zoning, permitting, inspection, and state and local incentive programs solely through our organization. Tenants of TexAmericas Center tend to be private business owners and corporations seeking flexible and cost-effective space solutions.
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Eric Voyles, Executive Vice President, CEDO at (903) 306-8923 or email at Eric.Voyles@TexAmericasCenter.com