COOPERATION!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Wow, Ed. I need to get your address so I can send you some bandaids. After that one, your finger tips gotta be bloody. Some really great info! I disagree that trucks don't pay for hiway maint. They do in fuel taxes and some other piddly taxes that they pay. But, they don't come near covering their fair share. Don't get me started on trucks vs rails. I fart wrong at work and I am taking a whiz test. Almost anybody can get a CDL (I have a class A CDL myself) and roll down the hiway hauling whatever and not ever see a urine test. A truck full of whatever rolls killing three people and you are lucky to see a little blurb about it on the news. A train derails 10 cars of coal in the middle of nowhere it is all over the news. What gives? The railroad industry is constantly scrutinized, while a large portion of the trucking industry slips through the cracks never checked. I have never seen a train swerve and hit somebody else or never had a train be discourteous to me on the hiway, or flip me the bird and not let me merge onto the hiway. O.K. I'm done whining.

[edblysard]

Wow, Tim, ..
Lets see if this helps. Yes, railroads do cooperate with each other, we share a common data base on car movement, but, like any business, we also compete with each other. If we all got together in that big room and set a fixed rate for switching, most of the CEOs would be charged with rate fixing. They call it a monopoly...at one time, before 1985, the federal goverment did set a fixed rate for a lot of the things railroads charged for. Because there was no way for any road to charge any more or any less than the next, the smaller roads, or those who served limited areas couldnt make enough money to cover their expenses, and went bankrupt and out of business. Remember, railroads have a fixed number of track, routes and mileage they can use, all owned and mantained by the railroads themselves. Unlike your interstate highways, which are subsisdised by your tax dollars, or your city streets, again paid for with federal funds, property taxes and sales taxes and bonds, railroads have to foot the bill for all of their expenses. Take the size of say, UP, verses little ol Port Terminal Railroad. They have thousands of mile of track, we have around 450. But it cost us the same to buy ties, switches, rail and deisel fuel as them, so our cost are equal in that respect. Truckers dont pay a dime for the freeway they use, we bought all 450 miles of our right of way. Truckers dont have to maintain the overpass that they hammer, but if we tear up the track, we pay to repair it. Free enterprise rules truckers as well as railroads now, but untill 1985, we had to charge the same as any other railroad. But I bet JB Hunt, if they really wanted your business, could and would legaly cut their rate down below Schnider to haul your load of widgits from Chicage to LA. Before 1985, railroads couldnt do that. When Regan signed the Staggers act, the federal goverment said, in essence, "yes, railroads are private industries, business run for profit, not public utilities, and they should be allowed to compete between each other". Untill then, all rates had been set by the goverment, and they were higher than they are now, so shippers went to trucks in a big way, due to cost. But now that we can compete between ourselves, railroads that invest in back into the property, plant, newer locos, better computers can give shippers a better rate than ever. Look at it this way, why would I invest millions of dollars to double track, and install new signals on my main line from Texas to California, improve my fleet, hire more people, just so I have to share my profits from that investment with someone who didnt invest a dime, but did drag a boxcar across town to my yard?
And yes, we do schedule trains amongest each other, we have no choice. Here at the port terminal, our member lines have slots allocated to them to bring in their trains, which we have been advised of hours in advance. BNSF 102 will be here at 1600, every day, just like EW60, for the UP, will show up at 1630 to pull UPs cars. Sometimes, just like truckers, breakdowns occur, congestion happens, but overall, we all work to get the train to where it needs to be. It is in our best intrest to do so. As for the BNSF/NS mentioned, if BNSF gets paid its rate to haul the car 1 mile, and NS gets paid its rate to move it 500 miles, why should NS share their profit? If you sold ten loaves of bread, but rainbow sells ten thousand, why would they give you part of their profit? Your both in the bread business, competing against each other. Rainbow wins and makes more money because it manufacturing cost per loaf is cheaper than yours. When the price was the same for 1 mile on road XYZ, as it was for road ABC, but ABC was huge and XYZ was small, well, XYZ went out of business. But now that XYZ can charge a little less than ABC, more shippers are sending cars across XYZ's railroad, even for short hauls, because it cuts down on their cost. XYZ wins, they make money. When it cost the same, why use two roads?
As for taking trucks off the road, look at this.
Before 1985, it cost the shipper the same, per car mile, to haul a boxcar on any r.road. So if you were located in nowheresville, north dakota, 100 miles from the nearest major railroad yard, you would pay the same, per mile to have your boxcar hauled out to you as the guy sending 50 boxcars to new york. Lets say you only need one boxcar per week, and you dont even fill it up, you only have it half full of machinery. So it a less than car load shipment. Justify the expense of the railroad to maintain 100 miles of track, pay crews, and maintain a locomotive just to service a business 100 miles away that only needs their service once a week?. But trucks can bring your machinery to your door, on public roads, that you paid for via taxes, and their cost is ? Driver salary and fuel. There is no public funds spent on the railroads, yet we(taxpayers) spend billions each month to maintain the interstate, but dont charge a user fee to the people who use it to make money(truckers). Railroads spend millions each month to maintain their tracks, so each mile of track has to earn its keep each day, or the railroad wont keep it. Take where I work, the PTRA. The only reason we exsist is because there isnt enough room for all the railroads to build tracks into the ship channel area, and because we can switch cars cheaper that the class 1 would charge. If you are say, Shell Petrochemicals, and you ship almost exclusively on the UP, we, PTRA, pull and spot your plant, and when you pay your UP bill, part of that bill includes the fee we charge to work your plant. And that part is cheaper than UP would charge you if they did it, because UP dosnt have to maintain the tracks, pay the crews, purchase the locomotives ect...
Again, to the lots of trucks off the highway.
Trucks deal in small amounts, or less that car load shippments. They haul a small amount, per truck, of frieght and goods, and most of it is for one customer. You dont see 100 trucks all going to the same business at the same time. The advantage railroads have is volume. We can, per mile, move huge amounts of almost any product coast to coast cheaper that anyone else. What we cant do, is haul small amounts of a given product coast to coast for the same money as a truck. So trucks will always have a market in the less than carload business, and railroads will allways have the huge volume business. And one tank car holds about three times as much as one trucktank, a boxcar about twice as much as an eighteen wheeler trailer.
So yes, on less than car load shippments, trucks are the winners on long haul. On 100 cars of wheat, well, BNSF and the Port Terminal Railroad just took 200 to 250 trucks off the road this afternoon, twice.
Stay nosy...keep asking tough questions,
Ed

[wabash1]

So let me see if i get this straight. we both work at the same job i work 2hrs make 20 dollars. you work 10 hrs for 200 dollars. but you are going to give me 80 dollars for sitting at home drinking beer while you work and that we get paid the same amount. where do i sign up.

[Anonymous]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have reread every input under the topic Miscellaneous R.R. Revenue and looked over my notes and have come to one conclusion. The trucking industry is winning the long haul shipping war because RAILROADS DO NOT COOPERATE WITH ONE ANOTHER!!!! I believe what needs to be done if railroads are to grow.
1.All railway companies must sit down in a big room and come up with a way to standardize swiching rates.
2. If say, BNSF talks a customer to ship by rail but BNSF only moves the car 1 mile and NS moves it 500 miles then NS should "kickback" a small portion of the profits it made on that 500 miles to BNSF for bringing in a new custmer.
3. Railroads need to come up with train scheduling between each other so that custumers will know how long it will take to get a car from point A to point B.
I believe that if the railroad industry would cooperate with each other they can take alot of trucks off the highway. Am I wrong? If I am please straiten me out.
TIM A