My 1980 IH Scout was shipped by rail to Southern California. Too bad that IH stopped making the Scouts, I had some fond memories of it.
The study shows that $1.1 Billion of “Motor vehicles or Equipment is captive”. A pretty small chunk of the total motor vehicle and parts market.
But tough if you are one of the producers in that chunk – your competitors have a built-in advantage, and you are probably domestic, and they are likely foreign.
Notwithstanding the allegation that IHC did not ship by rail [three of our four Internationals were shipped by rail – don’t have the Line Ticket for the fourth in its file, and like erikem, my 1980 Scout was also shipped by rail], other motor vehicle manufacturers do most emphatically ship by rail. One of the advantages that new entries into domestic automotive production enjoy is their ability to select locations with competing rail lines available which gives them a competive advantage over established domestic plants (i.e. American manufacturers).
Toyota has a specific plant location policy to that effect.
Toyota has also done somewhat better than Navistar the past few years.
The study does not show that freight forwarder traffic is captive. It shows that $19 Million in freight forwarder traffic is captive.
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For what it’s worth, Wabash has stopped manufacturing domestic containers as per their recent press release:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=113608
Quote of note from Bill Greubel, Chief Executive Officer at Wabash: “It has become increasingly clear that corrugated steel boxes from China and Korea adequately satisfy customer requirements at prices significantly lower than our container offering.”
That leaves Schneider, until they decide to pull out. Anyone else left in the US to manufacture domestic
Funny, the only person I have ever seen say anthing about this “perception” is you.
Bert
That can only be due to a self-imposed quarantine on information from the outside world. It has been a substantial controversy and an ongoing discussion.
If you review the ARC [“The Alliance for Rail Competition, whose members ship a wide variety of bulk, packaged and intermodal freight by rail”] and CURE websites, representing the major captive shipper industries, that’s about all they talk about. If you review relevant Senate and House committee testimony over the past five years, you will see literally thousands of pages of testimony on the point. Articles have appeared in Traffic World, Railway Age, Journal of Commerce, The Wall Street Journal, and others on the matter,
Some examples:
“As businesses dependent on the railroad industry, we are vitally interested in the financial health of America’s railroads. We simply cannot operate successfully in this country without a financially viable railroad industry and a secure railroad infrastructure. Indeed, I believe that the ability of American manufacturers and producers to compete in today’s global market is highly dependent on the rail freight industry. Today, unfortunately, the rail freight industry impedes – rather than enables – our nation’s global competitiveness. American manufacturers and producers find it more and more difficult to remain competitive against manufacturers and producers outside the United States.” June 20, 2006. Testimony Before Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Scien
[(-D][(-D] Yea right, I will go read that right now[:D] However, FM, I guess I was wrong, other people are as off base as you. Sorry for not realizing that.
Bert
Yep, the entire US manufacturing sector and their proponents are all off base, and only the railroad industry and their supporters are right. Par for the course embodied by this forum.
So, when was Tijuana and Baja California admitted to the Union as the 51st State? Must of happened during the Lewinsky scandal![:P]
What you’re missing is that “efficiency obsession” is not an outgrowth of normal free market forces but of monopoly market skewing (“Omigosh, there he goes again!”). What the railroads are doing in my opinion is using their monopoly power to engage in social engineering over the supply chain by pushing domestic double stack at the expense of TOFC, simply because double stack pleases the bean counters at the Class I’s, and despite the desires of the customers who wish to utilize a flexible, adaptable intermodal concept to improve their lot. TOFC is the logical choice of the supply chain if all things were equal in a free market sense - I believe you would see very little domestic double stack but a whole bunch more of TOFC if we
I think we gave them Oklahoma or a old battleship or something in trade.
As far as truckload traffic conversion, check out NS’s quarterly analyst presentations on the web. They show double digit growth in truckload traffic - trailer and containers combined, but broken out, the TOFC component is shinking (you can’t see this in the presentation, but you already know this. The “domestic” traffic shown is the old, traditional IMC, RR controlled trailer business). This growth is in spite of fuel cost adjustments and rate hike that are attempting to keep the growt
I would have to say that the number of piggyback trains has gone down, but they still exist.
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I think we gave them Oklahoma or a old battleship or something in trade.
As far as truckload traffic conversion, check out NS’s quarterly analyst presentations on the web. They show double digit growth in truckload traffic - trailer and containers combined, but broken out, the TOFC component is shinking (you can’t see this in the presentation, but you already know this. The “domestic” traffic shown is the old, traditional IMC, RR controlled trailer business). This growth is in spite of fuel cost adjustments and rate hike that are attem
OK I will give you that we should take the NS slide show with a grain of salt, however should we also take the numbers given by Mr. Sol with a grain of salt too? They were studies that were paid for by shippers who claim to be captive. Why is it that certain people on this board use numbers from studies done by “captive” shippers as examples, yet when other sides are shown, be it from an independent goverment office like the GAO or the railroads, we are told to take them with a grain of salt?
I was wondering when someone was going to point that out. I guess I’m not the only one Michael will be reporting to Bergie that is following him around and pointing out the error in his examples.
Well, they quit making the Scout and closed the factory by the time I got there. It was a good vehicle but they didn’
I know that the ramps are disappearing but they are useless to load anything but a 89 footer, you need a mi-jack or equivalent to load spines and well cars. So, the fact that ramps are disappearing isn’t always indicative of TOFC going down. But I agree that TOFC is a distant second to containers.
The interesting part of these exchanges is how Stawbridge attacks legions of reports and studies by professionals with all sorts of relevant backgrounds, and can never cite a number, analysis or study that supports what he says. It always a simple litany of “wrong,” “dumb” “troll”, etc, etc.
“There is no rail monopoly.” Both ICC and STB have handed down decisions that state the contrary in given markets.
So why does Strawbridge say such things? For the same reasons he says that a stock buyback with debt that results in a lower stock share price for fewer remaining shares of stock actually means that those stockholders are better off – increased “shareholder value”! For the same reasons that he claimed that the Milwaukee gateways were useless, in the face of a reality that they were a roaring success. And that air resistance has a negligble effect on horsepower needs of trains. That trains and train cars are getting lighter and lighter. The list, by now, goes on and on.
Now, how does Strawbridge know that the “numbers are far, far below” the 31% revenue from captive shippers shown by the captive shipper studies?
This is a key to these exchanges – he never says.
Never an analysis, never a citation to any study. Gosh, with all these statistical studies out there, you’d think somebody would do one that supports Strawbridge! Just never seems to be there though for some reason. Just conclusory statements accompanied by the usual “wrong,” “dumb” “troll”, etc.
I have offered multiple citations to sources. He has none.
Interesting.
What “error” are you pointing out and what is your basis for your claim?
And why are you crying about being reported to Bergie?
Your materially and intentionally false representations regarding dieselization studies that you pretended existed, and your plagarism on that topic was quite a while ago. And I did not contact anyone about that, other than what you read publicly on this forum.
Have you intentionally misrepresented something more recently that caused you to be contacted by the moderator? Well, what was it?
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I think we gave them Oklahoma or a old battleship or something in trade.
As far as truckload traffic conversion, check out NS’s quarterly analyst presentations on the web. They show double digit growth in truckload traffic - trailer and containers combined, but broken out, the TOFC component is shinking (you can’t see this in the presentation, but you already know this. The “domestic” traffic shown is the old, traditional IMC, RR controlled trailer business). This growth is in spite of fuel cost adjustments an
RR jargon fades away slowly. Many folks call any intermodal terminal a “ramp” whether or not there is, or ever was an actual ramp at the intermodal terminal.
Last circus loading ramp on Conrail was Island Ave. in Pittsburgh which was replaced with a new, bigger terminal on the east side of town in Pitcairn in the mid 90s. (and, yes, FM, they still handle TOFC there…[:)])