We get in rail cars of lumber at work on the BNSF. They have a customer wbsite portal that allows me to track cars and predict when they’ll show up. That system is pretty accurate. Usuing that, I can predict when I’ll see a car, give or take a week to 10 days.
Recently, they’ve started weirding out on ship dates. It appears that they are slowing down some cars in an effort to have less deliveries to us. That makes some sense, as it’s easier for them to deliver 3 cars at once, than 3 cars one at a time.
My yard crew was worked up. As of last Friday, BNSF had us scheduled to get 4 cars tomorrow. That would be a stressor for us. I told the guys there was no way that BNSF could pull that off. I was right. Today’s info shows one car tomorrow, two on Thursday and one next week.
There’s certainly that possibility. I released a car last week that went like this: 7 miles north to Sioux Falls, 20 miles NE to Garretson, 40 miles SE to Alvord, where it sat for a couple days. Then 50 miles south to Sioux City where it sat for a couple days. Then north through Alvord again, back through Garretson again, then took a left hand turn back to Sioux Falls again. After a couple days it went NE again through Garretson for the third time, then on to Willmar to head for Aberdeen and the west coast. That’s 220 extra miles just seeing the sights. I’m glad that railroads are more efficent than trucks.
They’d have to really work at it. There is a real cost advantage for rail shipment of lumber, especially if it’s coming from Canada. For the most part, it’s not time sensitive to us, but it does cause some issues on our part trying to figure out what the railroad is doing, and when. I appreciate the railroad’s effort to keep receivers up to date, but they lose that advantage when they get all squirrely.
BNSF is PSR just like the rest of them. What non-employees do not see out of this is the format is not just train ops or client services, but all other modes including dispatching, crew management, timekeeping and right down to the type of trash bags the rr now is providing for locomotive cabs.