Let's take it from the point of the plant.
The plant has purchased some peas for delivery in China. As the end use they actually extract starch from yellow peas and create clear noodles--very elastic, stretchy noodles. That's a growing market for us; over 250,000 tonnes of yellow peas went into China last year.
At a point in Saskatchewan, just for argument's sake, once the peas are bought and inside the plant, the next step of the process is to get something called terminal authorization, so you have to book a vessel. You have to ensure that you have a spot on the vessel for your product that's going to be shipped to China. You have to do that before you can get a booking at a trans-loading facility.
You're going to move your peas to Vancouver to be put in containers. They're going to be put in containers at a trans-loading facility in Vancouver. Then they're going to board a vessel, but before you arrange for railcars at your plant, you have to ensure that your vessel is booked and that your trans-loading facility time to put the product into a container is also booked. Once you've done that, the railways will commit to allocating your cars.
For our industry, the record has been that once you've got those things in order, the number of cars allocated is in the neighbourhood of 20% of what you're requesting. You have to order hopper cars to put your peas into to move them to Vancouver, and you're only getting 20% of what you've requested.
On top of that, when the cars do come, typically they're in a condition that's not suitable for movement, so they have to be repaired by the staff on site. Not only do they have to be repaired into a condition suitable for moving your product, but they also have to be repaired within the time limits specified by the railway, or else they'll charge you demurrage on that.
So already you've been allocated fewer cars than you've requested. The cars show up in poor condition. You do load them. You get them loaded on time. Then, of course, the railways can move them when they feel like moving them, so they might move them within a day or they might move them within seven days.
As Peter said, your next hurdle is transit time. On average it's 16 days to get to Vancouver. With the variability, you could arrive in eight days or 24 days. Obviously this creates huge problems for the transloading facility that's going to move the peas from the hopper cars into the containers, because they don't know when your product's coming and you don't know when it's coming and often everything's coming at once, so it all comes on top of each other.