Just a hypothetical question… how much would a railroad charge a customer to simply move a car or two. How is the pricing established? Let’s say a shipper/receiver gets his cars spotted at the normal location and later realizes he needs a car or two moved for whatever reason, so they have the railroad make a special trip out to move the cars around. What would the railroad charge for this service? Would it be pre-determined in the contract between shipper/receiver and the railroad?
Dave
I don’t know if this will answer all your questions, but here is UPs site for getting prices:
Your question is too vague to be answered simply. To answer the last part first the charge will be a tarrif item rather than a contract. Look at the UP switching tariff.
Case 1 is an intra industry switch. Cars have been spotted and customer wants to rearrange them within the same facility. Will charge as intra industry switch on per car basis. Railroad will not make a special trip out to do this unless customer will pay special train service, which is hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour with a minimum call out time. Will not charge if railroad error. Will not charge if work done in next regular switch and relative order of cars is not changed. Will charge if order of cars is changed, and will charge on per car basis.
Inter industry switch is to take a car from Joe’s place and take it to Sam’s within the same terminal. Again charge on a per car basis and is typically more than intra industry.
If Sam’s place is on another railroad within the terminal, then both intra terminal and reciprocal switch charges will apply.
Final case is customer wants car sent outside of the terminal. In this case line haul charges will apply. This can get very expensive if no commodity rate exists for the move and class rates apply.
Look at the switching tariff and you will find charges that apply in each situation at different terminals.
The charges exist to discourage customers from moving cars on a whim. The problem with these charges from the railroad’s point of view is capturing the event to generate the switch bill. Cathing the intra industry events is particularly difficult. Ed may be willing and able to tell you how they do it on the PTRA which is a switch carrier and probably has a well developed system for capturing the revenue due for such services.
Mac
One way to solve intra plant switch billing problems is to get the customer to do their own switching.