An so we reach the end of the line. As of Spet 1st UPFE the successor to PFE was shutdown. All employess have been transferred to the car department.
https://northplattebulletin.com/union-pacific-freight-express-hits-end-of-line/
Sad, as far as my memory goes back.
Every afternoon at my location SSW MP104 (teen ager then, now 75) that Colton Block Special would roar through town as an expdite. PFE yellow cars the only thing on the train. Get that California fruit to the East coast ASAP.
Memories endmrw0918221116
Reminds me a bit of REA, and much more recently the abandonment of the Cold Train model.
Evidently cheaper to have private entities own the cars, and outsource people to service them.
UP still owns reefers. ARMN cars are UP owned. I haven’t seen a PFE-SPFE-UPFE car in many years. Once in a while I would see a yellow door off a UPFE car on a white ARMN car, but that’s about as close to the old PFE era as you could get.
Using outsourced contracting is starting to happen more and more. It’s happening in all departments, mechanical, MOW, signal. They even use contract switching companies in a few intermodal yards.
Jeff
Bean counters sharpening their pencils again! It is great as long as the contractors understanding of what they are to supply equals what the railroad thinks it is paying for.
Back around Y2K CSX outsourced its communications to AT&T - with the expectations of 24/7/365 service and response - AT&T’s defination of 24/7/365 was 8-4 M-F Holidays excluded and No Overtime. Inside of 6 months the contract was cancelled and a number of employees were rehired.
Send the reefers to Sioux City Cold-Link Logistics.
- Anyone can cherry pick and tell a horror story, what about successful outsourcing? 2) The object of the exercise is to make as much money as possible. So keep sharpening away, guys!
Money and Service abilities - are two different things and one is eay to measure, they other is much harder.
I didn’t ‘cherry pick’ my example - I experienced it.
How about government…
Army had a program called “Commercial Activities.” Departments had to put together a list of requirements that a commercial company could bid on to take over that department, as well as making their own proposal to bid on their own jobs.
There were two issues: One, many departments are conglomerations. Mine handled network, telephones, data processing, and email. Usually that would be two or three companies. Anyone who bid on it would have to combine all the functions.
The second had to do with a department’s own bid. In order to be successful, the proposal would have to show a 20% reduction overall.
Reduce costs? Of course! This was after several rounds of previous belt tightenings, so people would lose jobs and the “do more with less” principle came into play.
He was being sarcastic. There’s plenty of successful outsourcing… done by competent outsourcers. Often the quality of work goes up. The key, as Balt indicated, is to know how to optimize the cost and how to optimize the service, and not make one completely subject to the other. Unfortunately, the usual result of the practice is similar to the joke told about why the Space Shuttle blew up in '86: “a million critical moving parts, all supplied by the lowest bidder”.
It is not difficult to tell when outsourcing is not ‘going properly’ – Balt’s being a worse-than-usual example. In my experience the practice is often a slippery slope as there is the expectation that downside cutting can have the same continued rate of change as upside growth. We know that’s not how it works, but all too many don’t – especially those whose only concern with companies is the quarterlies and the three-month price targets.
Some outsourcing works, some doesn’t, and some actually speak understandable American English.
I’ve noticed that too over the years. I imagine “PSR” has increased the use of contractors… While I’m not against contracting out services. I think when it comes to certain aspects of infrastructure MOW, and Signal. It’s best to leave those practices in-house…