Railroads for the most part have gotten out of the Fast Freight Buisness.
Gone are the days of Western Marylands Fast Freight and the Speed Merchants
Of the NYC and Pennsy. Sure You have UPS trains but even those transit times are slower then team-trucks. What railroads have evolved into is Coveir Belts of Commdeties such as Coal and Grain. For a Grain Consumer such as Gennesee Beer it does not matter as much as how fast the grain car gets there but it matters that the grain car is spotted at the same time everyday. It might take a month to move a carload of malt from Nebraska to Rochester NY. This means that there will be 29 other cars floating out there on the railroad web but since moving grain by rail is so much cheaper then truck the cost of inventory negates the cost of transportation. Just as long as a car of grain shows up every day. Since there is nothing special about the grain and Gennesee plans its batchs of beer(They also contract brew Sam Adams and host of other brews) months in advance a phone call to the railroad today and to the Elevater will get the “covier belt” moving so that the grain car will show up 3 weeks from now and every single day there after. Unfortualnty for railroad labor a railroad strike disrupts not only the railroad but every industry that depends on warehousing in transit and Just In Time delvery systems. A railroad strike basicaly means that GM auto parts and Grain is littery being held Hostage out on the railroad and these corpration are being deiniged there property. Its hard to suddenly transload 1000 cars of autoparts to trucks
I had a difficult time fininding the “Center” of your topic. I think it is freight transit time.
One month from Nebraska to say… Rochester NY for Genessee is quite unacceptable from a trucking point of view. They probably will deploy 100 drivers and rigs to run weekly and satisfy Genesee with a very large amount of business.
Any strike disrupts everything from POL (Petro, Oil and Lube) all the way down to lumber and the damage splashes everywhere.
NYC recieves several hundred loads of produce nightly by 18 wheeler. Why then should it be difficult to transfer 1000 boxloads of auto parts? A auto Plant in Buffalo NY has thier own yard and recieving area for the cars. While I dont think they can take all 1000 but surely process a fair amount each day.
The real crippiling effect since the 1950’s is the loss of national passenger service, National Postal Mail and Express and loss of virtually every siding worth hooking to a industry all around every city and hamlet that then are turned into rails-to-trails or even paved over pernamently and built over in the name of expansion.
Converyor belts of solid unit trains provide income that is steady to the company. Pinch that off and the money flow will surely fail.
And finally I am a strong believer in confirming my own astronomical stupidity and ignorance of anything related to railroading: HEre goes:
Western Maryland specialized in gathering and “Bridging” traffic to and from all over as fast as the engines can lug it all over the mountains. The Fast Freight is dependant on how much can be placed onto a given drawbar of a locomotive without breaking while getting as much transit speed.
And finally I suspect that other Brewers have special arrangements to get thier own hops from choice locations. I think Germany is one such supplier and need shipping to get it to a USA port of entry.
Think SIT yards, plastic, and the cost of warehouse space for millions of tons of plastic pellets…
The experience we have had with rail delivery in no way matches your description. I work at a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and we use about 70 tons of corn starch each day. This used to be shipped in airslide and PD covered hoppers. When we used rail we had to keep at least 2 weeks of inventory on site in railcars to ensure a continuous supply. Even though our supplier shipped one car each and every day we would often go a week or 10 days with no deliveries. Then suddenly 8 or more cars would show up one day. Yes we tracked the cars, and yes we tried to get them expedited. Some times they sat in the local yard for several days before the crew would decide to bring them on the local (which passes our plant every day). The attitude we got from the employees was “you’re lucky we bring it to you at all”. Certainly not everyone had that attitude, but enough did to make working for consistant delivery impossible. So we now receive our starch in PD trucks. And no, it is no more expensive for us to have the starch shipped by truck than it was to have it delivered by rail . In fact it is less expensive because we are no longer paying demurrage on the railcars and we were able to get rid of our trackmobile (and the maintenance that it entails). The trucks are lined up waiting to get in to unload each and every morning,
rdg
Your tale ought to be dailey required reading for every operating officer and train and engineman. Erattic service has driven off millions of tons of business from the railroads and killed thousands of operating jobs and they guys who are doing it are either ignorant or stupid or both at the same time.
Mac
Well said. I totaly agree. The railroads don’t seem to have a problem schedualing JIT delivery for auto parts. You would think that schedualing delivery consistancy for bulk commodeties whold be an even easier task then that. Mabee they need to fire some bean counters and hire some traffic planners.
One of the companies that the Old Dog worked for as a college summer job tried receiving it’s plastic pellets by rail. They even brought a end of track bumper for the siding they were going to put in. The lack of consistant service killed the deal.
Have fun
One of the companies that the Old Dog worked for as a college summer job tried receiving it’s plastic pellets by rail. They even brought a end of track bumper for the siding they were going to put in. The lack of consistant service killed the deal.
Have fun
the falacy in your logic is that the beer company does care how fast it gets there. They have a lot of capital tied up in grain that hasn’t been delivered (and I doubt itis just one car) that could be used elsewhere. The world is full of people and companies that didn’t get the picture in time - USPS, railroads, swiss watch makers (who invented the digital watch by the way and said it would nevert be accepted), buggy whip makers, GM, Xerox, Hayes modems, Lucent and many more. AND it will always happen. It is never what you know that puts you out of business. It is what you don’t know or understand every time.
From a friend at CP:
"I work in this “world” every day and some of the things I see astound me. One thing I will say is that it’s not ALL management. (I might get shot for that statement, but so be it.) Since coming to Bensenville I can see where the term “yard snake” came from. Some/most of these guys seem bent on seeing who can “screw” the company the worst because they are not getting a "quit"or some other supposed transgression by the Company. Well gee, if you work 8 hours for 8 hours pay to “screw” the company versus working 5-6 hours for 8 hours pay-getting a quit-, who are you really screwing? Directly, you are screwing the customer because now their car doesn’t make it’s connection ('s). The Company is screwed by this act, down the road, because the customer eventually gets fed up with it taking a car a month to go 1000 miles, so they no longer ship by rail, due to the long transit times, depriving the Company of revenue. The thing none of these morons seem to realise- and no, I don’t care if any of them are on this list, as I have had this discussion before at B’ville. It just falls on dead ears-is that when you lose your customers you don’t have traffic to move. And when you don’t have traffic to move you don’t need as many people to move that traffic. People get furloughed. What is really surprising about this phenomenon is that some of the worst people for this are the younger guys. The ones that will get cut. (But then I guess they never said you had to be smart to work for the railroad.)
“On-time means premium rates. The customer will pay for service. Always late means low rates and low rates of return. They won’t pay for crappy service. These guys don’t get it, and after watching this go on on a daily basis for all these years, I doubt they ever will.”
Best regards, Michael Sol