In written testimony, companies say operational changes have led to unfair fees, logistical issues
PSR is driving more freight to the OTR industry and straining our already limited capacity to the point at least here we are at close to the point of not being able to take on anymore customers or loads. Yes your hearing that right we can not grow fast enough to absorb everything that UP NS and CSX is driving to us. There isn’t enough trucking capacity in the industry left to handle what the Railroads that are adopting PSR is trying to drive off. Sooner or later the STB is going to have to step up and force changes onto the railroads and how they deal with their customers. Yes we in the OTR industry are about to ask for relief also from the Railroads and their PSR crap. Why it is clogging up the logistical pipeline and sooner or later it is going to hammer the economy hard.
What is the OTR industry?
Over The Road trucking.
The people that the Manufactors and consumers of everything turn to when the railroad excutives come up with a Moronic Idea such as PSR. The men and women that haul 70 percent overall and 100 percent on a final basis everything that gets used in this nation.
It sounds like what is needed is Precision Scheduled Railroading that has the ability to deliver individual railcars to shippers exactly when they request them; no sooner and no later. That way, cars would get the best possible utilization without the need for demurrage charges unless a customer holds the car too long through no fault of the railroad (for delivering more cars than the customer needs).
How could the railroad industry accomplish this goal?
No worries! The new tariffs will take care of all that extra tonnage.
Have enough people and engines to do it. Oh wait, that goes against PSR as well…
It’s not an exact science out here (as they would like). Customer A may get a bunch of cars, but can only handle 5 at a time at their inudstry. In a perfect world, they could get 5 in and 5 out every day, and wouldn’t need any excess cars stored in their nearest yard. But any small interruption in the pipeline (derailment, missed connection, weather, a train not running for lack of crews, then suddenly they are high and dry for a day or two.
I know PSR wants to tell the customer what they want, but that business model doesn’t always seem to work out.
Those of us with a rail spur would disagree.
The customer complaint seems to be that extra cars are waiting at their plant now and they rack up extra demurrage charges because the customers can’t use the cars fast enough. So why don’t the railroads leave the extra cars on the customer’s propery exempt from demurrage as though the cars were actually waiting on the railroad’s property. Wouldn’t that be fair? Why should the customer be charged demurrage when it is not they who are letting the cars stand around unproductive.
The answer is the same as ‘why should drivers in California incur $273 fines for driving in the carpool lane’ or ‘why take farebeaters off light rail in handcuffs’. Because they think they can.
One of the fascinating things about the “PSR” scam is that ‘precision scheduling’ doesn’t mean what you or I or the customers think it ought to mean. All these years since W. Edwards Deming taught the Japanese how to win the Second World War should have left us with transportation that supports lean and JIT manufacturing, by ‘precision scheduling’ deliveries in a time window that minimizes dead overhead while not restricting practical production or operations. While railroading is not as good at this as good custom-critical truck operators, they can certainly work with shippers to determine their needs. But most of this current Hilal-and-Hunter show stuff isn’t to benefit the customers, who appear to be little more than tolerated as a reason to Run Trains, but to improve technical metrics like the OR by making as much use of capital (including human capital) as possible without actually spending more money unless they have to. This is cute as far as it goes, leads to all sorts of fun operations-research papers, in fact points us at the charming prospect that railroads can pick 'n choose their customers just to the point the new and streamlined corporate physical plant just services things up to its comfortable capacity… little or no need for costly and possibly surplus-to-requirements physical plant improvements for “prospective” traffic or hard-to-get new business. Yes, it’s a perversion on the tenets of value investing (and it’s interesting to see how Warren Buffett does and doesn’t tinker with his management team at B
Demurrage begins to accrew when cars are actually or constructively placed - the clock starts to run on the first 7 AM after placement. Before PSR shippers and consignees were allowed 48 hours to either load or unload the cars as necessary, what the requirements are today I have no idea. Cars are constructively placed when the customers facility cannot have the cars physically placed because it is full. Cars placed at 8 AM have their demurrage clock start ticking at 7 AM the following day. In pre-PSR days a car arriving 8 AM on Friday would not have it’s demurrage clock start until 7 AM on Monday.
There are also Open Gate and Closed Gate customers. For open gate customers cars are placed on the next switch after arrival at the serving yard - if the customer’s facility has the room. If not, the cars will be constructively placed. For closed gate customers all cars are constructively placed upon arrival at the serving yard. Customers then order the cars in by specific car number for their regular switches.
HAZMAT customers MUST accept their loaded cars on the first switch after arrival. FRA regulations prohibit storing of HAZMAT on carrier tracks - this causes such customers to lease tracks from the carrier in t
But we have to remember - we don’t make anything. We are customer service. I think some higher ups forget about that from time to time.
Customers sometimes do create their own problems; however, a good transportation supplier will know enough about all involved parties so that most problems can be averted. For example today… had a couple of heavy 48K steel coils destined to ship to a receiver in NJ. I know very well that this receiver’s crane can’t handle that weight… they’d either need to reconfigure to two coils of 24K each or find another intermediate receiver with a bigger crane. Fortunately we flagged the problem before it became too serious… shipper decided on the first course of action, and a major headache was thereby averted. And that’s just one example… so many more that crop up every day. I’m sure its the same with rail. Details like siding length… condition of track… work crews on site etc are all important. Miss one detail and everything falls to pieces.
How many logging railroads are left. In the USA and Canada the number is zero. Trucks haul it to the mill.
And form the worst catagory of truck drivers I have ever encountered on the highways.
Here in NC they pass stoped school buses.
I won’t aruge with you on most local drivers we have several carriers around here that all need a visit from the police on what safe driving means. Let alone what a safe amount of cargo is for a trailer. The companies that live in that 100 air mile radius of their company and get away with no logbooks are the worst in my eyes. All my drivers are required to log everything they do as they do it. These places all they are required to do is have a time clock and drive.
As to Balts question if a place refuses to unload or load one of my drivers for 6 hours the first 2 are free the next 4 are billed to them at the rate of 400 an hour. We also will do everything including taking that shipper and consignee to court if need be to collect. Regardless of when we collect we pay the drivers 60 bucks and hour for sitting. Safeway foods hates to see us if that tells you anything about how agressive we are about collecting. I looked at their file yesterday and they currently own close to 40 grand in detention time fees. We only go to 2 of their DC’s with straight pulloff loads. They know it our drivers know it yet they still delay my drivers on average 8 hours every time there. We deliver a load a week to those DC’s and we are the only carrier with a contract with the shipper that will haul to them.
From the article, it sounds like the railroads rasied the tariff amounts in addition to the fact that there are more tariffs incurred due to car utilization delays caused by too many cars being delivered to customers at one time. Why would they raise the tariff amounts?
To better serve the customer? [:-,]