On this question, when you talk about the end of a hopper car's life, there are two parts to that question: the first is from a straight mechanical point of view; the other is the economic life of the car, which Mr. Mongeau was referring to.
In mechanical terms, these cars can go on for a long time. The AAR has rules. For example, cars built before 1974 have a 40-year life, after which they must be retired. The oldest cars were built in 1972 to 1974, and they would have a theoretical mechanical life of another five to seven years. The cars built after 1974 have a 50-year life, as mandated by the AAR, on a mechanical basis. The majority of them have another 15 to 17 years, other than the CN aluminum ones and some of the 2,000 cars that were built pre-1974. It's nice information to know relative to how long you can theoretically run these cars.
The big issue we're talking about is competitiveness. We're talking about choices on how we want to proceed as an industry. We're talking about the total industry, the farmers and the railways, working together towards selling products in international markets. Those are the trade-offs.
What we always get into is this. While it's clear that the new high-capacity cars are more efficient, they are also quite expensive. The cars provided by the government are older and obviously less efficient, but they're provided to the system at no charge right now. The trade-off we want to work through with Transport Canada is that those cars have a value.
As in all businesses, you cascade older equipment into less productive services. There's a high volume in grain, and it's a business that is very good for the railways. Our niche is moving high volumes from a limited number of origins to a limited number of trainload movements, opposed to single cars that you have to gather up and switch through yards, etc.
If we want to be the most efficient, we have to match the two, while capturing the value of the cars. We're going to talk to Transport Canada about broadening the permitted use of those cars so that we can capture value, not only for us but for the system, and work in that way.
The other thing you were talking about was on refurbishment. There are various things, but the biggest issue, as was identified through the QGI report, is on the gates of certain types of cars, as well as the capstans that are used to open them up.
The problem we have is that on half of our cars, first of all, the gates were designed and put on these cars long before the current methods of opening up these gates. In the old days, they used big steel bars. They now use high-powered pneumatic guns, and the gates are not designed for that. Very clearly, when you have a piece of machinery used in an application it's not designed for, continuously year after year, you're going to have some problems.
We're looking forward to negotiating with them now that we have some certainty. Replacing gates is also a costly endeavour. We need some certainty, and we need to negotiate an understanding with Transport Canada. Once we've done that, we're going to do so.