This is from the USDA “Movement Report” of July 10, 2008 - Figures are compareable season to date volumes for the growing season for each commodity. Central California origins of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, TOFC loadings…
Lettuce (Iceberg, Romaine and “Other”) Last year=0 loads, This year=1,538 loads
Oranges Last year=2,493 loads, This year=4,142 loads
Carrots
Dont go thinking that its gonna make a dent in the down turn we’re looking at.
Yes, rail traffic is down due to the economy. Wouldn’t the continuing high cost of fuel help push more truckloads onto the rails?
The fuel situation would definately push more loads, either intermodal or carloads to the rails, but, this economy is in the crapper right now. Just watched NS 17R, a daily run thru from CN to NS (Fond du Lac, Ws - Columbus, Oh). Today’s was the smallest 17R I have ever seen, only 80 cars. That train is almost always over 100 and usually 125-160 cars. Dont know if it is due to something down the line being abnormal, but it was an unusually short train.
Unfortunately, there isnt a lot of good news out there. The consumer is being hit by high gasoline prices…just wait until winter and the heating costs kick in. Natural gas is being forecast up by as much as 50%. Financials are really taking a hit, Freddie and Fannie are possibly on the verge of failure. Wait til you see what that will cost us.
Murph, selling any lumber?
ed
Ed- not selling as much as I should be. We’re in sort of an economic oasis here-for now. The only big problem we have is price increases on materials. Those are limited only to those items that involve steel, petroleum products, or anything that involves transportation.[}:)]
Yep another thing they take in account is how long is the customer is gonna stay in business, there out to pinch the pennies they have now rather then pick up some more. As it has been in years past when things were good, they only want to come out there when theres a 100 cars to pull. The heavy stuff makes more money. Quite a decline / oil crisis we are in. Watch what happens when Iran and Israel go after each other. Something to watch for sure.
this time of the year traffic is allways at its lowest level of the year. why trains are shorter[:)]
Ahhh i dont know about that, first couple months of the year usually are the slowest. About October is when we start to see traffic turn down and start laying off people, economy is what your seeing now.
UPRR engineer,
I’ve seen several posts from you predicting bad, bad times for the rail industry.
But I’ve read more than one article recently that stated that railroad workers are one of the few jobs that are actually growing right now in the United States. And if you look on UP’s jobs site, they say they’ve never had such a need for new employee’s.
If UP is really excpecting such a decline in rail traffic, wouldn’t they just let the positions go by attrition of retirees, instead of rapidly trying to fill them?
Just curious. You definitely have a closer look than I do.
Things have really changed here in the last month or so, they have been cutting people off big time everywhere.
The: “Never in Union Pacific’s 145-year history have there been as many opportunities for employment and rapid advancement as there are today. With baby boomers retiring in record numbers and the intense demand for our transportation services, we’re hiring in unprecedented numbers in every part of our company.”
Is a bit out dated now from the home page of the “hiring site”. After looking at open train service spots now compaired to a few months ago, theres not as many openings. California always has a hard time getting and keeping people due to cost of living as seasonal lay offs. Like i said, they are starting to lay people off big time where im at, its really picking up speed. A few of my buddies that are close to retiring are now saying they might not. If there dollar isnt worth crap theres no sence pulling the pin. They have students here and in other places close, as soon as they mark up there gonna get cut off. Guys arent gonna leave if they’re not gonna be able to enjoy it. Of course there will be a few that dont believe the energy crisis. Whats showing on the website is outdated, its been there for a few years now. The only first hand accounts of people getting cut off are from the barrow outs here from the “flatlands” looking at the boards back home and looking at the guys getting cut off in Rawlins and Cheyenne coming to work here. I know one guy in Texas thats a UP employee thats been on for a few years, know him from another forum board, he’s looking to be cut of again. Besides California’s work force problem, id think that everywhere is seeing a slow down in traffic. It’s an over hire problem, guess they didnt see it coming or they thought maybe it wasnt gonna be on the front step so quick.
Hope that helps, our local business hasnt showed a slow down yet, if anything its pi
Sorry about coming across like that, high oil prices really has a tight hold on us, more then most people know. A day or two of watching CNBC steady while the stock market is open should be enough to scare anyone about the economy.
July is a very slow month for domestic intermodal. Jan and Feb are worse, but July has been the 3rd worst for several years in my experience. That aside, there are several mid-size truckers who do ride w/ refers.
I’ve seen the Z-STOWSP (BNSF trailers Stockton - WillowSprings (Chicago)) with a pretty good number of reefers, hauling Calif. produce to the midwest.
Guys like Stevens Express, CR England and Marten are good examples of truckers that have a niche competency in intermodal refrigerated. You’ll see a bunch of their stuff on that train.
Stack.
A gloomier man I’ve never come across.
The point being that in tough economic times people may forego the new plasma TV, but they’re still going to eat. We do have folks here saying that this perishable stuff is “truck natural” and that the railroads really can’t handle it. I beg to differ and I am confident that the numbers cited in my first post prove my point.
If the railroads can handle iceberg lettuce cross country they can handle just about any perishable commodity cross country. And it’s a huge market. California provides half the fresh fruits and vegeatbles for the US. That’s around 500,000 refrigerated truckloads per year leaving California. And those aren’t short hauls. Those loads are going to eastern population centers.
That’ll repair your dent.
For the past 10-15 years the railroads have been in the enviable position of having too much business. Now, they’re going to have to dig a little. Do some marketing, etc.
Where’s a good place to start digging. Those California perishibles look promising.
Nah, you’re fine… Lots of people right now are worried about the future of their respective jobs. I just wanted to ask you about that, especially seeing as you’re an actual UP employee.
How common are layoffs and how long do they usually last?? Do you know if they’re as common on midwestern railroads? I’ve actually been thinking of trying to spend a few years after college (I’m 2 years away from an electrical engineering degree) working on a train crew before I finally have to settle down and take up a desk job. The though of being laid off and having bills coming in scares me to death though, even though that can really happen in any industry, salary or hourly workers too. Do they lay off the less senior crew workers before the older guys?? How long does it usually last?
How about an Auto Train for trucks?
Rgds ign
…Isn’t something like that employed over on the traffic thru the Chunnel from Europe over to U K and visa versa…
[banghead][banghead]
I’m kind of surprised about the numbers on refrigerated freight. The biggest hole I saw was 0 loads of lettuce last year. One of the major produce suppliers has been moving bin loads of lettuce for package salads by rail(TOFC) for a number of years & this should have shown up in the previous years totals
The other surprise is broccoli. This is not hard produce like carrots , oranges, potatoes, or apples (IE not time overly time sensitive). Lettuce is real time sensitive due to short shelf life as is broccoli.
I drive for a medium sized OTR refrigerated truck company. One comment about refrigerated freight a lot of times it is also called temperature controlled. The reason why is this in addition to keeping things cold we also have the ability to keep things from freezing(temps of 35f to 70f, as well as limited abilities to keep things warm(80f-90f).
Generally what I’ve noticed about intermodal refrigerated is that rail moves a lot of frozen or things that are not real time sensitive(iE cheese, candy).
If Railroads could get into the area of stuff that is real time sensitive. IE not being 2nd choice because someone could not get enough trucks to move large quantities.
One of the comments I heard in my company was that Railroads did not have enough ability to change something around if the freight was late for a train. At one point my company was moving 48’ containers or lettuce for one of our major shippers.
The problems that happened were on any number of occasions these containers were not making their scheduled trains in Fresno. The problem that mainly happened was usually in the field. Rain would make the field muddy slowing down production. On one occasion the scale at the cooler was damaged. The freight was sent anyway, but because of the above loads were not properly scaled then got stopped at scale house. A truck, crew , a couple of forklifts had to be sent out to fix 11 loads at a scale house.(the CHP was very
[quote user=“narig02”]
[banghead][banghead]
I’m kind of surprised about the numbers on refrigerated freight. The biggest hole I saw was 0 loads of lettuce last year. One of the major produce suppliers has been moving bin loads of lettuce for package salads by rail(TOFC) for a number of years & this should have shown up in the previous years totals
The other surprise is broccoli. This is not hard produce like carrots , oranges, potatoes, or apples (IE not time overly time sensitive). Lettuce is real time sensitive due to short shelf life as is broccoli.
I drive for a medium sized OTR refrigerated truck company. One comment about refrigerated freight a lot of times it is also called temperature controlled. The reason why is this in addition to keeping things cold we also have the ability to keep things from freezing(temps of 35f to 70f, as well as limited abilities to keep things warm(80f-90f).
Generally what I’ve noticed about intermodal refrigerated is that rail moves a lot of frozen or things that are not real time sensitive(iE cheese, candy).
If Railroads could get into the area of stuff that is real time sensitive. IE not being 2nd choice because someone could not get enough trucks to move large quantities.
One of the comments I heard in my company was that Railroads did not have enough ability to change something around if the freight was late for a train. At one point my company was moving 48’ containers or lettuce for one of our major shippers.
The problems that happened were on any number of occasions these containers were not making their scheduled trains in Fresno. The problem that mainly happened was usually in the field. Rain would make the field muddy slowing down production. On one occasion the scale at the cooler was damaged. The freight was sent anyway, but because of the above loads were not properly scaled then got stopped at scale house. A truck, crew , a couple of forklifts had to be sent out to fix 11 loads at a scale h
Interesting that there is at least a small shift of produce to rail. In the right circumstances, the railroads can offer a service acceptable to the produce market, but overall, they will not be able to beat one man on a truck running direct from the packer to the facility where the loads are broken down for distribution to the retailer.
It is probably true that freight charges using rail are now or soon will be less than what truckers will need for the longest hauls-western growing areas to the midwest and east- but that will have an impact only to the extent that those who pay the freight decide that the added cost of truck transport can’t be passed on to the consumer. So long as there is a reasonable supply of trucks, I don’t expect any sudden dramatic shift to rail. And I also don’t see the rails beating their brains out to try to get a major increase in the share of this market. As things are now, the railroads are running at or near capacity with freight that does not require as much attention as is necessary to handle produce. Dry freight doesn’t spoil when the load is delayed just a day or two.
I’m not going to say that the railroads will never become big players in the produce business. I just don’t see the rails now being willing or able to offer up such a big difference in the freight charges as to cause a sudden massive shift to rail.
By the way, the latest load reports from the AAR may not be sterling, but it is obvious that the sky is not falling on the railroads. Year over year numbers for last week were up and for the 27 weeks of 2008 carloads were up .3% and intermodal was up 1.9%.
It depends on where you hire out, unless you next to something that never slows down at all during the year, coal, soda ash, chemicals… riding the ups and downs of mainline traffic is when guys get cut off. When that happens, what they do is cut the number of turns and guys off the extra board. The guys on the bottom that cant hold those jobs any more bump into the yards (if there is a yard near by), if they cant hold a job there considered to be layed off. They start at the top and its a wave that flows down the senority roster. Like i said Oct. Nov. is usually when they start and guys start coming back about Feb. May. By summertime everyone is back and then you start to see most of the new hires.
Check your PM box there Fallen Flag, send ya to a place that talks more about hiring on and what to expect.