When I See a Map Like This, I See Trains

[greyhounds]

When I see a map such as this I see freight trains of opportunity. 

 

This is the US hog population in 2017.  In 2019 the retail US per capita consumption/availability of pork was 51.9 pounds.  That’s the highest amount since 1994.  But there’s more.  Something like 23% of killed US pork is exported.  The largest export customer by volume is Mexico.

 

The slaughter facilities are overwhelmingly located very near where the livestock is raised.  Livestock is now rarely transported signiicant distances to slaughter. 

 

Look at the west coast.  It’s virtually devoid of hogs.  Don’t people out there like BBQ ribs?  Pork Chops?  Bacon and/or sausage?  Brautwurst?  Etc.?  

 

But, the west coast does produce much of our fruits and vegetables.  It’s a two way revenue haul made in Hog Heaven.  Railroads can move killed pork just fine.

 

Look at the Oklahoma panhandle.  There’s a smaller hog concentration there.  It supplies a major hog slaughter facility in Guyman, OK.  At 20,000 head per day it is the closest significant hog facility to the US west coast.  The Union Pacific has a main line through Guyman.  I’d be quite surprised if any UP marketing person has ever thought of hauling the pork from Guyman to the west cost.

 

I’m to the point where I’m beginning to think UP marketing people need GPS devices to find the restroom.  And then have a trained dog to get them back to their desks.

[Juniata Man]

Greyhounds:

Before I retired, you would not have had any trouble convincing me that UP had no sales force. Same for CSX. My interaction with both seemed to be limited to learning how much our rate increases would be with each contract renewal.

It's fascinating the senior management of some railroads simply can't understand you must have sales people out prospecting for new business and maintaining relationships with existing customers. Trucking companies DO understand it and practice it daily.

CW

 

[CMStPnP]

Juniata Man

Before I retired, you would not have had any trouble convincing me that UP had no sales force. Same for CSX. My interaction with both seemed to be limited to learning how much our rate increases would be with each contract renewal.

UP has a sales force I saw them in person back when I used to work at the GM Headquarters building in the 1990's on West Grand Blvd in Detroit (a party of about 4-6 sales people no less with UP tags on their jackets).    They were dressed in appropriate suits (none of the cheap Sears or JC Penney crap) and they all had spit shined shoes or corcan shoes I didn't look carefully but did notice all their shoes had a decent shine on them.     They each had a white name tag with the color UP RR emblem on their suit as well.     I say all that because not everyone that visits GM in a sales capacity looks that nice nor brings their own name tag (lol).   Having worked at GM the name tag is needed in some meetings.

I am going to take a wild guess here since my Father was also an Exec VP of a mid-size manufacturing firm.    The face time you get in front of a sales person is commesurate with the volume of business that you do with the firm that sales person represents.    Pretty confident that is the rule of thumb today.   

[Juniata Man]

Facetime relative to volume may have been an operating model in the past when sales departments were large and most interaction involved scratch pads and pens- lunches and dinners.

I believe the issue is several of the railroads have gutted their sales departments over the past decade or so. Exceptions to this are (or at least WERE before I retired), BNSF, CN and NS. We enjoyed fairly frequent contact with our account managers from those three.

And I guess I would add this last thought (and this kind of goes to Greyhounds point); might a lower volume customer be transformed into a higher volume customer if a sales person focused on them a bit more? After all; isn't that what sales is supposed to be doing, ie growing the business?

CW

[azrail]

Been there, done that for UP, they used to ship hogs from the Midwest to the Farmer John in LA in special stock cars with HOGX marks. That ended in the 2000s when Farmer John built hog farms in Eastern Arizona near Snowflake (which are supplied by feed shipped in by the Apache Ry) The hogs are now just trucked to the Coast.

[SD60MAC9500]

 

CMStPnP

UP has a sales force I saw them in person back when I used to work at the GM Headquarters building in the 1990's on West Grand Blvd in Detroit (a party of about 4-6 sales people no less with UP tags on their jackets).   

You mean had a salesforce.. The sad part now in the digital age. The RR's could get a jump on trucking by providing a more robust virtual marketing service. Acting in a capacity similar to the system when shopping for auto insurance. Choose what kind of service you are looking for then get a real time quote. Spot or contract rate based upon customers needs.

I notice on the map all the hogs rasied in North Carolina.. Well North Carolina is also the sweet potato capital of the US. People are growing very fond of sweet potatoes and it's a growing market. NS-UP could offer backhauls here via the Meridian Speedway..

 

 

 

[Shadow the Cats owner]

My boss has a very good web sales presence where if your interested in using his services for logistics you can request a quote including if you need warehouse services and such.  I can tell you this much I get on average about 2 emails a week from prosepective customers wanting rate quotes from companies wanting quotes for service from areas we deliver in all the time back to Chicago area as they are tired of getting shafted by brokers not getting trucks to them.  I know also in the last year my boss picked off 2 minor customers of JB Hunt and 1 of Swift in our area.  Why better service still will win out when your trucks get there on time everytime it does make a huge difference to the customer.