STB Chairman Oberman throws cold water on further railroad mergers

[Gramp]

Not altruism. Creating demand. The highest priority action in business. 

[jeffhergert]

Electroliner 1935

As to regulating train length, what should be the limit. Taking the case to the extreme. Could railroads act like a conveyer belt inserting cars at one end of a train and taking them off at the other end thus blocking crossing for a day. When trains get to be three mile long strings and slow down to under 20 mph, they can tie up towns for in my view excessive amounts of time. There will be cases where first responders are delayed. When I was about three years old (1940), I lived in Glen Ellyn IL on the South side of the tracks (C&NW + CA&E) and a house burned down because there was only one fire dept and it was on the North side of the tracks. And a slow moving C&NW freight had the crossings blocked. A couple of years ago, a CN train on the former EJ&E had the Barrington area tied up and an ambulance had to take a long detour to get the patient to the hospital. Who will be the DECIDER on what is acceptable. 

 

Train blocks access to house fire near Valley (ketv.com)  The train was tied down because of a derailment in Illinois.  The crew thought they had cut the proper crossing.  One that they didn't cut had an occupied house that no one on the railroad knew was there.  

Jeff

[greyhounds]

CSSHEGEWISCH

Rockefeller's decisions were based on enriching himself, not some altruistic goal of making petroleum products affordable.  Consider rebates paid to his firm on freight rates paid by his firm and his competitors.

Oh, I’ll disagree again.  John D. Rockefeller did a whole lot of good.

He became rich doing so.  So what?   The beauty of capitalism is that it incentivizes people to serve the common good.   JDR sure did that.

 

Before he started producing affordable kerosene people had to use candlelight after the sun went down.  Have you ever tried to live by candlelight?  He enabled people to have and afford decent light after the sun went down.

 

Rockefeller played hard ball business.  And that’s good.  You don’t waste a dime.  He’d drive hard bargains.  And that’s also good.  Walmart does that today.  And that’s good for us.

 

You might want to read Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller before judgement:

 

Amazon.com: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. eBook: Chernow, Ron: Books

 

That man did a whole lot of good for the American People, and the people of the world.

 

He drove hard bargains with the railroads due to his volume.  And that was good for us folks too.

[Gramp]

Yes, that's why he had such a hard time understanding the vitriol he encountered. 

[greyhounds]

Gramp

Yes, that's why he had such a hard time understanding the vitriol he encountered. 

Things J.D. Rockefeller did with his money:

 

1) He improved medical care.  Medicine and doctors were a joke.  You were a doctor if you called yourself one.  Medical school was maybe six months. The exception was Johns Hopkins.  Rockefeller would approach “Medical Schools” and offer money if they would adopt the Johns Hopkins standards.  It worked.

 

2) He supported education.  He was instrumental in the founding of the University of Chicago.  He also focused on educating black women.  Both done with his money.

 

3) He modernized and improved steel making in the US.  This was necessary for our economic growth.  He kind of just fell into this by accident.

 

The known iron ore deposits in Minnesota were controlled by a family that was in well over its head.  The ore was being shipped to the steel mills in small sailing vessels.  Despite controlling the ore deposits the family business floundered.  They kept needing to borrow money and pledged their ownership shares as collateral.  Rockefeller loaned them the money they needed.

 

After another default Rockefeller wound up owning the Iron Range as it was then known to exist.   He realized the operation could use a lot of improvement.

 

A major needed improvement was to replace the sails with steam powered lake freighters.  The calculation was that 12 freighters were needed.  Twelve new ships would challenge the ship building capacity on the lakes and drive up the price.  So, Rockefeller let it be known that they wanted one, or maybe two, such vessels.  The ship builders sharpened their pencils and submitted some lower offers.  Each ship builder wound up with an order for one or two ships.

 

The transportation was modernized at the lowest possible cost.  And we got more efficient steel production. 

 

Of course, the ship builders were upset.  But Rockefeller didn’t waste a dime.  And he did great good with the money he earned.  This was in addition to allowing an average person to have affordable light at night. 

 

 Read Chernow's biography.

 

[adkrr64]

greyhounds

This was in addition to allowing an average person to have affordable light at night. 

Indeed. Consider the graph on this page: https://ourworldindata.org/light

 (Yes, the chart is in British Pounds, but you get the idea)

 

There is a description of the various technologies that allowed the cost of light to steadily drop as the industrial age progressed. Almost all of the innovations that allowed that price drop were due to new technologies created by individuals persuing profit in a free market economy. They made money and consumers paid less and less, to everyone's benefit.