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QUOTE: Originally posted by Mallman64 [quote]In response to the "cherry picker" comments, who is obviously in the trucking industry; let me see if I can give you a different perspective on the "womb to tomb" scenario. If the farmer in Washington State harvests his cherries and puts his 3 month window into his state-of-the-art coolers and then has his salesmen pound the phone for over the road truckers as in the past but most recently to no avail, those cherries just "hand around the coolers with no where to go for up to 7-10 days at times, depending on whether or not the reliable trucking industry feels like working their way up from Cal where the supply is better and less driving. Now 5 days go by and low and behold, here comes a 48 footer with an attitude!! He loads his truck with those beautiful bings, load locks himself in, and off to Boston he goes. He checks his unit and its 90 degrees outside but its a cool 36 degrees in his trailer. He goes down the road and has 5 days till his delivery. More chances than not the driver is getting 5-6 grand for the trip so on the second day he says what the f... and desides to go to his favorite truck-stop and cop some crystal meth!! Any trucker with any brains knows he can make the trip in 4 days so WHY NOT HAVE A LITTLE FUN! Couple of white-trash rest area "hoes" glass pipe and who needs to call in!!!! Meanwhile the cherries inside ain't feeling so good because the unit tripped and now the temperatures a rising faster than the blood pressure of our "California turn-around" driver. We all know the story from here. Driver misses delivery, brings unit back down to temp first, loses the temp recorder, retailer rejects load, and rather than transload through a temp controlled rail center and inspect and deliver cherries through a destination point on the eastern seaboard for "just in time delivery" you are telling me that we should rely on the present "highly efficient" trucking inddustry that takes up 90 percent of the day, looking for these past heroes of the highway. Good for the railroad for showing some steel!!! I'd rather be on a GPS refrig train the first day out of a cooler than a truck attitude the 7th day out of the same cooler, without the glass pipe!!!! ENDQOUTE. First off. Let me say this. ANY driver caught smoking while on duty will be arrested, sent to jail and license is in danger. A typical long haul reefer driver is a company man who expects to make .25 cents a mile not 5-6 thousand dollars. That money probably needs the lading to be signed for delivered and the paper work processed. It can take 2 weeks to get the 5-6 thousand. Staying out of the interstate rest areas and keeping the left door shut and out of the truck stop is the way to protect yourself, your health, the truck and the load. If you cannot do any of this then I dont want you in a class 8 truck resposnisble for a great deal of equiptment, expensive cargo and service contracts. Some of the things I concede to trucking as I have had some wild times, but nothing that will prevent me from sharing with the family. But the perception that truckers are smoking while on duty, seeking out infected (Sexually and probably physically -medically) people who prey on those who dont know any better and other activites designed to prevent safe, fast and accurate transport of cargo is unacceptable to me. Period. That driver will find himself out of a job and probably in so much trouble it will take alot of time, effort and money to clear up. Something hard to come by when you are trying to make a living on the road. Now that I have had my rant in response to this posting I gotta say that I support this train service from Washington. It's very hard to get into the Yakima and out again probably thru the Eastern Oregon especially in the dead of winter which happens to be Chain season during the harvest. You tell me that this methadone smoked driver who is zoned out on his on world filled with pleasures and sickness is going to have the strength and the skills to bring a convoy of 100 trucks over the cabbage safely during a winter storm. YEA RIGHT. Put it on the train, each of those reefers can be tracked via GPS and monitored in real time for any mechanical or temperature problems. I ran reefer for a number of years and they were pretty reliable. I had a unit go down on me at Grand Junction on a chilly 50 degree rainy night at midnight due in Denver at 7 the next morning. I got up and took it straight thru the now 40 degree rain into denver because 1- no repair shops other than Salt Lake or Denver and 2- the value of the load was in excess of 100,000 and I will not be the one that loses it as a company driver. The load was repaired in Denver with some Heroics by Carrier getting out of bed and to work way earlier than usual start time. And the delivery was made. With that in mind, the Railroad is going to need an ability and manpower to respond to any number of reefer problems within 3 hours anywhere on the line. There are mobile repair units ready but I would expect nothing but the newest and the very best reefer cars for this job. Some produce is just too hot time wise to meet the 124 hour service. But Apples and stuff like Potatoes are just fine.
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