Ted Prince has been working for more than a year to turn his dream of an intermodal facility at the former Railex site in Wallula into a reality.

And on a recent morning, standing near a pair of reach stacker vehicles at the 65-acre site off Highway 12 southeast of the Tri-Cities, he had a message for the community and potential customers: “We’re open for business,” he said.

Prince is the founder and chief executive officer of Tri-Cities Intermodal, which is operating the facility that moves freight between trucks and trains with the mission of embodying “innovation, sustainability and dependability while offering reliable, efficient and time-definite service.”

The facility soft-launched early this year with a shipment of about 300 tons of hay, which was trucked in and then “lifted,” or transferred, to railcars and moved via train.

By mid-August, the facility was running about 100 lifts a week, with the capacity for about 60,000 lifts a year, plus room to grow.

It has rail connections west to the Northwest Seaport Alliance’s Seattle and Tacoma ports and east to Chicago. 

More routes are expected to open as it expands.

Prince said the Tri-Cities has all the ingredients necessary to become a major player in the logistics world, namely available land, a labor force, water and electricity. 

“My vision is that the Tri-Cities can be a global logistics center like the Inland Empire, like Shanghai, Rotterdam, Singapore,” he told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. “It doesn’t need a huge consuming population (to become a hub). It’s a waypoint to distribute throughout North America.”

He sees Tri-Cities Intermodal as being key.

The facility is cost efficient for importers and exporters, and it takes trucks off the road, cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions, Prince said.

It’s also unique among facilities of its kind, he said.

“There are about 17 intermodal facilities in tri-state area,” meaning Washington, Oregon and Idaho, he said. “We’re the only facility that moves east and west and handles marine boxes and domestic (goods).”

Marine boxes refers to freight shipped on ocean carriers. 

The first container is lifted from a truck to railcar at the long-planned intermodal ramp in Wallula, off Highway 12 east of the Tri-Cities. An intermodal ramp is a facility where freight is moved between trucks and trains.

 

| Courtesy Tri-Cities Intermodal

The site at 627 Railex Road, which also has a roughly 211,000-square-foot cold storage warehouse, has a long history. Railex, a refrigerated rail service and logistics provider, began operations there in 2006.

The site eventually sold to Union Pacific, but the railroad stopped operations there in 2020. Last year, the Kansas-based Tiger Cool Express planned to revive the site by opening an intermodal facility there.

But then the company abruptly shut down, throwing plans into question.

However, Tri-Cities Intermodal formed not long after and brought the project back to life, backed by investor PNW Capital. Prince also was co-founder of Tiger Cool Express, but Tri-Cities Intermodal is separate.

As of August, the cold storage wasn’t in use, though Justin Roberts, vice president of operations for Tri-Cities Intermodal, said they were looking for a lessee.

Prince said he’s excited about the future of the site and Tri-Cities Intermodal. 

It’s taken a lot of work and initiative to get here, and he believes it’ll pay off.

“This is a business where everybody wants to be second. So, we were fortunate. We have found some people – good partners – who want to be first and we’re moving forward with them. And every week we’re getting more people coming in,” he said. “...This is good for the area. It’s economically robust, environmentally benign. We believe this is the future.”