Loading & Shipment Safety

BNSF has solid processes in place to help you with your loading and shipment safety needs, including the following areas:

• Customer Assistance
  Safe and Damage-free shipping begins with good, balanced loading. To ensure your shipment arrives damage-free, BNSF offers free services ranging from on-site loading evaluations to complete ride-quality monitoring programs.
• Cargo Incident Prevention
  We work with customers to prevent movement of unsafe loads, expedite load adjustments to improve unit velocity, minimize cargo damage and provide customer recommendations to prevent a recurrence.
• Restricted Commodity Shipments
  Loading assistance is provided to shippers to facilitate safe, fluid movement of restricted commodity shipments. LARS employs fully trained OSHA Level A responders to handle unintentional releases of hazardous materials.
• Ride Quality Testing
  We monitor all shipments during train and yard handling to promote safe and incident-free rail handling jointly with BNSF Operations. This includes two kinds of monitoring: proactive to test corridor, loading method and also to provide you ride assurance; and reactive in response to service exceptions.

Obtain generic loading diagrams for some of the more commonly shipped products. Our team is also available to develop a customized loading diagram to meet your needs.

The following diagrams are in PDF format (Get Adobe® Reader®).

Boxcar

Intermodal

Additional Loading Assistance

Use of BNSF loading and securement methods are restricted to shipments moving on BNSF and approval must be obtained from a BNSF Load and Ride Solutions representative prior to shipping. These methods cover shipments of non hazardous material commodities, unless otherwise approved. Finally, because BNSF loading methods are not authorized with other rail carriers, it is the shipper's responsibility to get authorization from all carriers in the routing.

We host a number of resources that you can use to gather information before you ship your goods. Explore the following links to assist with your Loading and Shipment Safety needs.

• RAILSAFE
• Emergency Response Guidebook
• Haz Mat - DOT
• Railinc Publications
• Transportation Technology Center (TTCI)
• Approved Contractors  

BNSF's goal is to provide our customers with safe, efficient, damage-free service. However, sometimes transit damage can occur and BNSF's Product Recovery experts are here to investigate and document extent and cause of damage.

Resources

The following resources are in PDF format (Get Adobe® Reader®).

• Boxcar Loading Safety Checklist
• Boxcar Unloading Safety Checklist
• Salvage Pickup Authorization

Contacts

Area	Name	Contact
Report Loss or Damage	Product Recovery LARSLARS;lars;bnsf.com	Tel: 800-333-4686,option 1 (answered during normal business hours)

Loss and Damage Reporting

Damage Notification Report

When you contact BNSF during normal business hours, you can expect a quick response that will have your request rolling by the next business day.

Our loading and shipment safety team focuses on prevention services, whether it's through improved load designs, better application of dunnage materials, or better packaging. The key is our partnership with you.

Here's a list of items and information you'll need on hand to get you started.

• Your company name and mailing address
• Contact person and phone number
• Where you are shipping from, the route and type of service
• What you are shipping
• Loading plan (if applicable)

Contacts

Area	Name	Contact
Loading and Shipment Safety	Load and Ride Solutions LARS;lars;bnsf.com	Tel: 800-333-4686, Option 1 (answered during normal business hours)
Cargo Claim Information	Cargo ClaimsCargo%20Claims;CargoClaims;bnsf.com	Tel: 800-333-4686, Option 2