Wichita ? More of the Kansas wheat crop is moving to market this year on the railroad because of a shortage of trucks and a slow harvest in Oklahoma that has kept haulers there.

Also spurring the shift back to rail is the arrival of the Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad and the improvement in service and dependability that came with it, elevator managers said.

The short-line railroad was organized in 2001 when Pittsburg-based Watco Cos., bought the Central Kansas Railway from Denver-based OmniTrax.

The return this year to more rail use by many elevators is good news for the Kansas Department of Transportation, which faces major increases in road repair costs when the wheat harvest moves by truck.

Michael Babcock, a Kansas State University economics professor, estimated in a study released this spring that the loss of short-line railroads in the western two-thirds of Kansas would result in an increase of $58 million a year in highway maintenance.

The study was commissioned in 2000, when the future of the state’s short-line railroads was in doubt. Three years ago, 65 percent of the wheat in south-central Kansas left elevators on trucks.

But that has changed this year. In Conway Springs, Farmers Co-op Grain elevator manager Norbert Gerstenkorn has been loading 40 railcars every day this harvest. Down the road, the Lange Co. elevator is loading another 12 cars a day. A single railcar can transport as much grain as four trucks.

Babcock said those 52 railcars a day will save the state $29,000 during harvest season, just on road maintenance from Conway Springs to Wichita.

Other co-ops also report more reliance on rail this year.

Great Bend co-op manager Frank Riedl said he expects as much as 70 percent of the harvest in his area to move by rail.

“It’s the best way to move wheat,” he said.

Charlie Swayze, manager of the Farmer’s Equity Co-op in Barber County, said he’s loading railcars as fast as he can, and they are moving out every day.

“I would say we now have the best short-line railroad in the country,” Swayze said. “We’ve had daily service this harvest. We didn’t even have this kind of service in the best years of the Santa Fe. We’re filling grain cars as fast as we can.”

Garden Plain co-op manager Terry Kohler said he hopes to load at least 200 railcars this year.

One of the reasons for the big move to rail service this year is a shortage of trucks. A wave of trucking company bankruptcies in the past three years has meant fewer trucks on the road. And with the Oklahoma harvest bogged down in rain, many haulers are stalled south of the Kansas border.

Gerstenkorn said he loaded 545 cars last year, the first full harvest served by the K&O. In the five years before that, he says, he shipped almost nothing by rail because of poor tracks and poor service by the Central Kansas Railway.

Another advantage to moving by rail during a bumper crop year is that it allows faster turnaround at elevators with limited capacity.

Aaron Murphy, manager of the Cunningham branch of the Cairo Co-op, said yields in Kingman County are ranging from 45 bushels an acre to more than 70 bushels an acre. Murphy said his elevator would be in trouble this year without rail service.

“If we had to truck this, we’d be piling grain on the ground and praying for dry weather,” he said. “As it is, we’re moving it out pretty steady.”

K&O general manager Paul Fries said demand for rail service has been stronger than expected.

“The poor harvest last year obviously hurt because there just wasn’t that much to ship,” he said. “This year is good for the farmers, for the elevators and for the railroads.”