CSX's CEO explains what he thinks is wrong

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jis

jis

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Interesting article in Trains:

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...te-blaming-psr-for-rail-problems-is-nonsense/
In a way he is right in that the railroads, all of them, PSR or not, are essentially facing a virtual strike of sorts about which they can do nothing short of actually addressing the issue of job quality, something they have blissfully ignored for decades while doing the bidding of their Wall Street masters....
 
joelkfla said:
Magicians call that misdirection. "Nothing to see over there; look here instead."
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Yeah, after they manage to fix the real issue with labor relations, which is quite appropriately exercising his mind, then he will come to the realization that their idea of PSR is also a problem. But until then he can live in his current paradise, and hopefully fix the real labor problem adequately instead of discovering a new way of shoving it under the carpet for another day.
 
In-house training of employees. Employee that required months of training before there are able to work by themselves. Then you provide them with a brutal work schedule, with little time off. Not surprised they having staffing issues.

That said, everyone is short handed it seem.
 
MODERATOR's NOTE: Please keep the discussion in this thread on the topic of CSX. A couple of off topic/political comments were removed and others may be removed in the future.

Edit to add: additional off topic posts were removed.

Thank you for your cooperation.
 
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What do all posters think of this statement from Fritz? Note it comes from trains news wire.

Fritz says. “We run one-third fewer trains, which require one-third fewer locomotives, and also one-third fewer people running the trains and maintaining the locomotives.”
 
west point said:
What do all posters think of this statement from Fritz? Note it comes from trains news wire.

Fritz says. “We run one-third fewer trains, which require one-third fewer locomotives, and also one-third fewer people running the trains and maintaining the locomotives.”
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It’s ridiculous on its face. Nothing works like that. If I have a paella pan, rice and spices, and make paella once a week, or I make it three times a week, there’s a small incremental cost for the second two meals, but it’s not three times. You have mechanics, diesel houses, locomotives, etc. Once you have that base, adding more trains doesn’t increase costs that much. For somebody to say that is pretty silly.
 
toddinde said:
It’s ridiculous on its face. Nothing works like that. If I have a paella pan, rice and spices, and make paella once a week, or I make it three times a week, there’s a small incremental cost for the second two meals, but it’s not three times. You have mechanics, diesel houses, locomotives, etc. Once you have that base, adding more trains doesn’t increase costs that much. For somebody to say that is pretty silly.
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Yeah, consider that the overhead is the same (or pretty close to the same) for 3 trains as it is for two trains. That means that the two trains have to recover the same amount of overhead as the three trains did. That means you might have to charge more to shippers to cover the costs of the 2 trains, unless, of course you make the trains bigger and longer, which is what they did. The only problem, of course, is that the infrastructure can't really handle big, long trains, whereas it could handle three shorter trains with no problem. Also, you need more locomotives for the two really big, long trains, so maybe you're not really cutting the number of locomotives in use by a third by only running 2 really big trains. And if your infrastructure can't handle the really big, long trains, you might be losing more in delays, breakdown, lost business, etc. than you're gaining by having fewer people on the payroll to run the trains. I wonder if these whiz-kid MBAs actually conducted a proper life-cycle cost analysis on their clever ideas on how to save money. Even if they did, because most whiz-kid MBAs don't have actual railroad experience, they probably don't have a clue about the proper data to use for such an analysis.
 
MARC Rider said:
Yeah, consider that the overhead is the same (or pretty close to the same) for 3 trains as it is for two trains. That means that the two trains have to recover the same amount of overhead as the three trains did. That means you might have to charge more to shippers to cover the costs of the 2 trains, unless, of course you make the trains bigger and longer, which is what they did. The only problem, of course, is that the infrastructure can't really handle big, long trains, whereas it could handle three shorter trains with no problem. Also, you need more locomotives for the two really big, long trains, so maybe you're not really cutting the number of locomotives in use by a third by only running 2 really big trains. And if your infrastructure can't handle the really big, long trains, you might be losing more in delays, breakdown, lost business, etc. than you're gaining by having fewer people on the payroll to run the trains. I wonder if these whiz-kid MBAs actually conducted a proper life-cycle cost analysis on their clever ideas on how to save money. Even if they did, because most whiz-kid MBAs don't have actual railroad experience, they probably don't have a clue about the proper data to use for such an analysis.
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Very well said. I think most of these schemes like precision scheduled railroading just don’t hold up. It’s too bad that our railroad network is being hacked apart because of a hair brain schemes.
 

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