Shippers organizing to get better service

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So something arriving across the Pacific that is going to say Chicago ( rather common thing for distribution to the Midwest), what large body of water would the truck take it to from the Pacific Port?

Great Lakes Shipping?
Your ship would need to fit into the locks to access the area.

Size matters today, the ships travel across the pacific can’t fit into the Panama Canal never mind the Great Lakes.

If you need to move freight, there is plenty of options. It’s just laziness and the demand of profit that is preventing you from doing so.
 
Great Lakes Shipping?
Your ship would need to fit into the locks to access the area.

Size matters today, the ships travel across the pacific can’t fit into the Panama Canal never mind the Great Lakes.
There are relatively few container ships that do not fit Panamax using the new locks at Cocoli and Agua Clara. The original lock gates are a different matter, but naturally today's container carriers do not use those.

But the cost of a single transit using Panamax can be eye watering running upto a million dollars or more for a single crossing! But still it is apparently quite worth it since those new lock gates are in great demand and are never sitting idle for too long.
 
So something arriving across the Pacific that is going to say Chicago ( rather common thing for distribution to the Midwest), what large body of water would the truck take it to from the Pacific Port?

It would stay on the trucks if there is no water route.

Great Lakes Shipping?
Your ship would need to fit into the locks to access the area.

Size matters today, the ships travel across the pacific can’t fit into the Panama Canal never mind the Great Lakes.

If you need to move freight, there is plenty of options. It’s just laziness and the demand of profit that is preventing you from doing so.

That’s a good point about the ship sizes.

Oh well, it was just an idea. I will stop thinking now and let all the brilliant people come up with a solution.😊
 
Isn’t there some way for the shippers to get around the freights? For example, come into port from across the ocean, unload onto trucks, trucks take stuff to the nearest large body of water, unload onto boats that take the stuff to trucks at the other end, etc.?

The only stuff left would be the dangerous containers that can only go safely by rail. That I don’t have an answer for, but I am proposing the first as a serious solution. Just like a passenger might try to set up a plan to go from commuter rail to connecting commuter rail as a network if Amtrak shuts down.
That's been a problem too - look at the port backups they have had over the past few years in Oakland, as a particular example. Not enough truckers (and probably not enough trucks or highway capacity either) to handle to loads.
 
It would stay on the trucks if there is no water route.
Placing all of the containers that currently travel on rail multimodals, exclusively on trucks looking for waterways across the country would certainly have a non-trivial effect on the traffic on the interstates, assuming enough drivers and rigs can be found that is.
That's been a problem too - look at the port backups they have had over the past few years in Oakland, as a particular example. Not enough truckers (and probably not enough trucks or highway capacity either) to handle to loads.
That would in general be doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, that is moving more of the traffic on the more efficient rail mode.
 
Why, the famed North Platte shipping route of course!

In theory, containers could be transferred to barges in NOLA after cruising through the Panama Canal and shipped upriver to Chicago, however, that's dependent on enough barges and water levels (right now - or at least a few weeks ago - the Mississippi was extremely low and traffic was limited).

There is certainly a route from the Gulf into the heart of the Midwest even to Pittsburgh and into the Great Lakes, but requires transferring containers to a different ship.
 
https://www.bmwe.org/secondary.aspx?id=739
Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) Must End Immediately.

Published: Dec 14 2022 3:08PM

For the better part of two days in D.C. this week, testimony after testimony before the Surface Transportation Board, ranging from Labor Union presentations (including the BMWED) to trade associations to the rail customers themselves, has dragged Union Pacific’s operations strategy worse than a dangling E.O.T. device, thoroughly decimating the greed and short-sightedness that has led to U.P.’s utter ineptitude.

Any company worth its share price would feel complete shame and embarrassment for conduct that has led to U.P. issuing over 1,000 embargoes in 2022 – a practice where trade is stopped to clear up congestion and backlog – due to woefully insufficient workforce staffing driven by their version of “precision scheduled railroading,” which “Uncle Pete” comically calls “Unified Plan 2020.”

What PSR or UP 2020 or whatever you want to call it has done to their service is destroy it. U.P.’s customers are in the lurch, betrayed by a foolish strategy wrecked even more expeditiously by the Covid pandemic, where lean operating ratios and record profits were fixations rather than adequate and reliable service and dedication to fulfilling their shippers’ expectations.

What it has done to U.P.’s employees is a fundamental failure that hasn’t been seen to this degree in decades, if not a century. Just on the maintenance of way side, 22 percent of Union Pacific’s total trackage, 7,239 cumulative miles, is currently under slow order due almost entirely to the carrier’s decision to reduce manpower in the track department. As BMWED spokesperson Brother Rich Edelman told the STB Tuesday, that is the equivalent of 11-man football team intentionally inflicting two injuries to its on-field roster. It’s stupid.

In October 2021, U.P. had 6,123 MOW employees and claimed it was in the throes of a hiring spree spurred by recognition of its manpower-trimming misstep. Yet, in September 2022, the railroad has only 5,954 MOW employees, a REDUCTION from an already woefully inadequate number the year prior. And those employment numbers don’t even reflect the loss of workforce prior to the pandemic, which is an even more egregious precipitation.

Rail workers from every craft across the board can relay similar stories. Operating crafts are so egregiously undermanned that trains sit for weeks, causing the consternation for shippers that has been well-documented this week. U.P. regularly constructs trains in upwards of 13,000 feet when sidings are only 9 to 10,000 feet long, leaving dispatchers nowhere to divert passing locomotives. Circuitous routing that takes trains hundreds of miles away from desired destinations to evade further traffic congestion creates further on-time service delays. The entire wrath of the PSR model is eroding at warp speed and leaving both labor and customers at wit’s end.

Clearly, the railroads – not only U.P. but the entire Class I lot who have chosen PSR at the behest of Wall Street and the almighty dollar – must be penalized for their greed and incompetence. If the STB does not have the will or the teeth to hold them accountable, Congress should step in. The current operating and management system of America’s biggest rail carriers is beyond untenable – it is now obscene. Things must improve. The treatment of their employees must get better. The expectations of their customers must be met. The demands of their shareholders must finally take a back seat to the people who create their profits.

The travesty of Precision Scheduled Railroading must come to an end immediately.

*************

Back in the early 1980's after the Frisco took over the Burlington Northern in the territory I worked 1/2 of the MOW sections were removed as well as a traveling general maintenance crew shared by two Roadmasters. (along with their jobs.) Everyone's territory to cover was doubled. One branch line section was cut because according to management the track was "over maintained" anyway.

In the last 10 years the territory was again cut with only one section crew now remaining to maintain all trackage. About 200 miles of track plus four small yards. The only good thing is that this territory spreads out like a web and is not end to end like others.
 
IMO RRs should have sidings every 20 - 30 minutes spacings that would limit land barges to shortest sidings. If that means lengthing the shortest siding or restore sidings long enough so be it ! Also new sidings to fill in voids.
 
There are relatively few container ships that do not fit Panamax using the new locks at Cocoli and Agua Clara. The original lock gates are a different matter, but naturally today's container carriers do not use those.

But the cost of a single transit using Panamax can be eye watering running upto a million dollars or more for a single crossing! But still it is apparently quite worth it since those new lock gates are in great demand and are never sitting idle for too long.
It might in some cases be worth it to just sail from Asia around South Africa or South America to an East Coast port...
 
IMO RRs should have sidings every 20 - 30 minutes spacings that would limit land barges to shortest sidings. If that means lengthing the shortest siding or restore sidings long enough so be it ! Also new sidings to fill in voids.
I would think that just having a government regulation that limits the length of trains to the length of sidings on the route would do a lot to ease the problems. Does the FRA have the legal authority to do such a thing?
 
I would think that just having a government regulation that limits the length of trains to the length of sidings on the route would do a lot to ease the problems. Does the FRA have the legal authority to do such a thing?
Nah, never work. It makes too much sense. :D

I was watching some of the STB UP Embargos hearing last night. There was an interesting comment, I think by the union rep: "If there's a hot box near the end of the train, by the time the conductor walks back to it, it's cooled down."
 
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All I know is that when the tracks started being removed in our area the freight RR's expresses that it was done to eliminate "maintenance costs" ... maybe they meant "taxes" but that is not what they said.
In the UK too, especially during the Beeching area and right up until the 1980s, many former double track lines were reduced to single track. Maintenance costs were cited as the main reason. I guess this was factually correct as in the UK there was no tax advantage.

In some of these cases, I understand that on former double track lines, after single-tracking, the remaining single track was shifted over from the side to the middle of the alignment. This helped save costs for example if a railroad embankment or cutting was suffering from erosion or subsidence, as the central part was typically the most stable. The alternative would have been spending money on stabilizing or recreating the embankment or cutting. This is also why in the cases where this reduction has since been reversed and lines have been reinstated as double track, that this often took considerable investment.

I think in terms of the tracks themselves, the savings are probably not that significant as reducing a line from double to single track instantly doubles the number of trains using that track and thus leads to higher degradation and brings forward the time that it needs to be replaced. Furthermore more sidings and switches are required which all add to maintenance overhead.
 
I've been reading up on Reconstruction and learned that it coincided with the efforts of shippers to organize against real or perceived railway unfairness. The name of one of the shipper associations back then was:

The National Anti-Monopoly Cheap Railway Freight League

Some things don't change much.
 
In the UK too, especially during the Beeching area and right up until the 1980s, many former double track lines were reduced to single track. Maintenance costs were cited as the main reason. I guess this was factually correct as in the UK there was no tax advantage.

In some of these cases, I understand that on former double track lines, after single-tracking, the remaining single track was shifted over from the side to the middle of the alignment. This helped save costs for example if a railroad embankment or cutting was suffering from erosion or subsidence, as the central part was typically the most stable. The alternative would have been spending money on stabilizing or recreating the embankment or cutting. This is also why in the cases where this reduction has since been reversed and lines have been reinstated as double track, that this often took considerable investment.

I think in terms of the tracks themselves, the savings are probably not that significant as reducing a line from double to single track instantly doubles the number of trains using that track and thus leads to higher degradation and brings forward the time that it needs to be replaced. Furthermore more sidings and switches are required which all add to maintenance overhead.

Somewhere between Buffalo and Albany on the Water Level Route. Was this three tracks or four?
PHL-NYP 2007 041k Four-track.jpg
 
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