Greenbrier Companies (GBX)

[56Chevy]

Greenbrier Announces New Railcar Awards Including First For Tank Car Of The Future

LAKE OSWEGO, Ore., June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. (NYSE: GBX) announced its first awards from multiple customers for construction of 3,500 units of its new Tank Car of the Future. These awards, along with other awards for 4,200 railcars across a full range of railcar types, bring aggregate awards to 7,700 railcars valued at more than $960 million since Greenbrier's press release dated May 21, 2014. In addition, the Company disclosed there is strong interest from multiple customers in the retrofit of pre-2011 built tank cars currently operating in flammable commodity service. Greenbrier expects that GBW Railcar Services, its recently announced repair, refurbishment and maintenance joint venture with Watco Companies, will benefit from substantial maintenance and retrofit awards when the joint venture begins operation later this year.

William Furman, Greenbrier Chairman and CEO, said, "We are inspired by the commitment to safety demonstrated by our railroad, leasing company and shipper clients. Long-awaited regulatory action in Washington, D.C. will soon reinforce America's longstanding priority to protect the public and preserve the natural environment. Current tank car rulemaking must take caution not to squelch or impede the economic miracle associated with the energy renaissance in North America. Development of unconventional energy, including oil and gas from shale formations, has been responsible for up to a 1.5% increase in GDP. This has led to the creation of more than 1.5 million jobs, with steady employment gains. Millions of additional jobs are predicted in the foreseeable future as production of downstream energy products such as plastics and chemicals gains strength throughout America in virtually all states. Meanwhile, manufacturing in America will continue to benefit from lower production costs driven by declining energy prices."

Greenbrier's Tank Car of the Future is designed for safer transportation of crude, ethanol and other flammables in North America as well as use for other hazardous traffic. The car has advanced safety features which include thicker steel, more robust top and bottom outlet protection and jacketed shells with ceramic insulation. These new design features combine to inhibit discharge of contents during a derailment, to reduce penetration of the tank shell and to slow "pool fires" that can result when hazardous contents of a tank car escape in a breach and are ignited. Fire that does not spread as rapidly allows more time for emergency responders to limit the potential damage to communities and the environment that can result after a tank car derailment. The new design will also be equal in capacity volume to the legacy DOT-111 tank car with a loading volume of 30,000 gallons.

Conditional Probability of Release (CPR) measures the likelihood of tank car spills in the event of a derailment at different speeds and by different car types. With the Tank Car of the Future design, at a derailment speed of 50 mph, CPR improves to just over 5% from 45% in bare DOT-111 legacy tank cars. This improves CPR by more than 8 times from the least-protected tank car to the most-protected tank car, the Tank Car of the Future. Also when measured by CPR, the Tank Car of the Future is twice as safe as the current state-of-the-art tank car for transporting hazardous materials—a fully jacketed and insulated CPC-1232.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12749759/1/greenbrier-announces-new-railcar-awards-including-first-for-tank-car-of-the-future.html