I learned more about PSR from this article than anywhere else…including this forum:
Interesting article, and especially that reader poll at the end of it.
71% of readers polled said railroads need more regulation. THAT should scare the hell out of some people!
My answer to the poll question was “unsure.” I was in the 8% group.
IF railroads in some way get re-regulated they will have EHH’s PSR and CSX’s implementation of it to blame.
A real eye-opener. Borderline fraud.
Well there it is folks, if any big businesses get themselves so regulated they don’t know what hit them they typically have only themselves to blame.
So it was, so it is, and so shall it ever be.
The really sad thing about history is some people, maybe most people, especially people in positions of power or responsibility, never learn from it.
The late columnist James J. Kilpatrick said it better than I ever could concerning corporate stupidity and short-sightedness, and I agree with him 100%…
“I’m a conservative, and a capitalist, and business has no bigger friend than me, but they make it awful hard for me sometimes!”
That’s essentially what Matt Rose implied in his interview with Railway Age a few months ago.
There’s a rumor going around at work. It’s not exactly a new one, but some other outside the railroad sources suggest there may be some truth to it. UPS is gong to start pulling business off the rails. Not just us, but all the railroads.
If that happens, maybe it will be a wake up call they need. If you can’t keep a customer you actually care for somewhat, how are you going to keep the rest? While many say they don’t have an alternative, most do. It’s called a truck. Yes it might be more expensive, but others have bit the bullet and done it. Once those customers are gone, good luck on getting them back.
Jeff
BNSF’s financial committment and twenty plus year operation at Willow Springs shows what it has done for UPS. And of course UPS has their own huge sorting operation next door. If UPS is changing it may be for enternal reasons.
Still seeing many UPS trailers on UP West. If that business stops, it will be noticeable. Did your sources say why UPS would leave the rails?
Disatisfaction with the service being provided. I found this article from late last year. https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20181011-off-the-rails/
Since the article was written, the Teamster contract has been ratified. Since the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen is affiliated with the Teamsters, I get their newsletter. Although the numbers I see when looking on line for how many OTR jobs to be created differ, the newsletter said UPS will create 1000 OTR jobs.
Someone else said UPS is hiring full time OTR drivers off the street. Something they usually don’t do. Like a lot of their other operations, y
I’ve heard the same rumors out this way. From what I understand, PSR hasn’t been extended to our intermodal side (as of yet). Who knows if it will. Every month brings a new flavor.
PSR is far from being Precision and its Scheduling is far from Repeatable.
That form of PSR is what the customers want and expect. What they are getting is Piled Sh.t Rotten - and they are responding has anyone would with Rotten Sh.t Piled on them.
It would appear that some bean counter has concocted a scenario where handling the UPS business isn’t sufficiently profitable.
Priority-Shifting Railroading.
Every week, it’s something new being phased in or out.
But in the end, it’s all about how much can be cut.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Reading our recrew report, I notice giving priority to UPS business (and they come right out and say ‘sorting UPS trains’) causes a lot of other trains to die on the HOS. I’m sure that even though they hate the thought of losing UPS, they’ll rationalize it’s loss on that basis. That it was just getting in the way of our other trains.
Oh well, store more engines, furlough more people, charge remaining customers more money. Things will be OK.
Jeff
As a personal project for a number of years, I did analysis of CSX Recrews, day to day, month by month for each division on CSX.
The cause of recrews - co
Whilst visiting Deshler this summer, at least one train sat for almost an hour waiting for the crew van to show up. And that was the train sitting on the wye by the park. Another crew was in the van to relieve a train sitting on the main west of town, too.
Watching the cam, as I often do, it’s not unusual to see a train (or two) sitting south of town, waiting for relief.
Seen the same thing on the Cherryville and Shelby siding.
There are many things that enter into the decisions about recrewing trains.
Does the train ‘have time’ to make the final terminal? With how much time to spare? - Many times trains do have time (when you have to make the decision) to make their final terminal then something happens - to them or to some other train in the mix.
From the time the decision is made, it takes 2 hours to get the crew on duty - transportation gets ordered at the same time - the transportation vendor may or may not be able to supply the transportation when requested. The second decision to be made is whether to use one taxi or two. If using two, what point ar you going to send it to for the crew that is going HOS - can the taxi find that point? That gets the HOS crew off their train sooner (when it works) but they have to secure their train since the arrival of the recrew is not precisely known.
A second tactic CSX used was to call ‘Road Switcher Crews’ in order to have those crews recrew one or more trains within a nominal 60 mile distance from the proper terminal. This was done for two reasons, economy of manpower and under the metrics used by CSX to ‘hide’ the recrew(s). Road Switcher rate of pay was slightly higher than the Through Freight rate of pay.
Over the road transportation takes time once the recrew gets on duty and gets their paperwork in order.
Peopl
We used to also have enough yard crews that you could send one to drag trains in, but you know, psr and all that. Have to have the bare minimum number of people doing the absolute maximum amount of work.