greyhounds Backshop just reread the OP. He's theorizing that UP doesn't service LV with intermodal just because one train doesn't stop there. It sounds like it may be a high priority LA-Midwest train. I'm sure there's other trains setting off blocks, though. The work is already being done. No, I said the UP does serve Vegas with intermodal. But they don't do LA-Vegas intermodal. I'm trying to come up with a way for them to do that and you're not helping.
Backshop just reread the OP. He's theorizing that UP doesn't service LV with intermodal just because one train doesn't stop there. It sounds like it may be a high priority LA-Midwest train. I'm sure there's other trains setting off blocks, though. The work is already being done.
No, I said the UP does serve Vegas with intermodal. But they don't do LA-Vegas intermodal. I'm trying to come up with a way for them to do that and you're not helping.
I am not aware of there being a plethora of meatpackers in LA that are necessary to supply the Las Vegas market of casino restaurants and buffets. I could be wrong.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
At least we figured out part of the problem: "handbrake setting robots"!
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
BaltACDI am not aware of there being a plethora of meatpackers in LA that are necessary to supply the Las Vegas market of casino restaurants and buffets. I could be wrong.
Meatpackers? Meatpackers? I don't need no stinking meatpackers! Did you see me write "Meatpackers?" Did you see ME write that? You did not. You are making stuff up.
Meat will come into Vegas from the Midwest. Also Texas. But that's another opportunity. Chicken comes from the south.
Here's what I really said:
"The people in Las Vegas need things such as tires, toothpaste, bananas, shoes, orange juice, etc."
And that is true.
I certainly didn't mention meat.
zugmannAt least we figured out part of the problem: "handbrake setting robots"
No way!
The robot is part of the solution. It is not part of the "Problem."
Maybe some small Pacemaker-size containers on flats with high speed trucks - 3-4 each hauled behind scheduled Brightline West Service as a mixed train. Haul in poker chips, champagne, and Casamigos tequila. Mixed train daily with a twist of lime.
Is UP moving at least some of the outbound junk and bodies they're pulling out of depleted Lake Mead?
What's the durable goods market like in Las Vegas? If anything the only major market I see is for foodstuffs,and bottled water. Which would be coming from California and seasonal perishable from Arizona's Salt River District..Bottled water from the Midwest/Northeast.
Once you find that out. Then make the determination in LV needs IM service from LA. The items you listed may not be the core items for the Vegas market.
The fact may be alot of goods from POLA/POLB are not destined for LV due to market forces. If the outbound tenders aren't that great. I wouldn't expect UP to waste resources. To be frank I bet the durable goods that do terminate in LV orginate east of the Mississippi..
greyhounds BaltACD I am not aware of there being a plethora of meatpackers in LA that are necessary to supply the Las Vegas market of casino restaurants and buffets. I could be wrong. Meatpackers? Meatpackers? I don't need no stinking meatpackers! Did you see me write "Meatpackers?" Did you see ME write that? You did not. You are making stuff up. Meat will come into Vegas from the Midwest. Also Texas. But that's another opportunity. Chicken comes from the south. Here's what I really said: "The people in Las Vegas need things such as tires, toothpaste, bananas, shoes, orange juice, etc." And that is true. I certainly didn't mention meat.
BaltACD I am not aware of there being a plethora of meatpackers in LA that are necessary to supply the Las Vegas market of casino restaurants and buffets. I could be wrong.
You always write about moving meat so whenever you write anything meat is implied by default.
Here's a link to UP transit times for intermodal. While there's no LA-LV. There is LV-LA container service that get's PU by a stack service originating from UP's G2. In the search box put Las Vegas for origin then put Los Angeles for destination. Look at the transit time that pops up, and this will give you one of the clues to why LA-LV domestic service doesn't exist..
https://c02.my.uprr.com/fpa/intermodal-schedules/#/
greyhoundsI do believe the hand brakes could be set by a robot.
I think that could be done, but exactly how would that concept be executed? I can see one approach where the hanbrake stays the same, and some sort of automatic machine gets hold of it and turns the wheel. Another approach would be to add some type of accessory to the hand brake that would help the machine make the connection. Or add an accessory that is always there to set the handbrake in response to a remote command.
BaltACDYou always write about moving meat so whenever you write anything meat is implied by default.
No way! I don't "Always" write about moving meat and I say what I mean. No implications involved.
You need to understand the basic concept. A product is produced/mined/grown/imported "Here" and used "There." Getting it from "Here" to "There" is what a railroad does for a living.
In this particular case the LA ports receive a whole lot of stuff from Asia. The large population of the Las Vegas area uses a significant portion of this "Stuff." So, the UP needs to figure out a way to move the freight from LA to Vegas.
The "Stuff" moving from LA to Vegas doesn't include much meat. And I never said it did.
What are the distribution patterns of the retailers serving Las Vegas? For instance if Dollar General already has it set up such that it is serving it's LV operations out of San Bernardino, I'm not sure how much of a benefit they would perceive from UP offering "hey, we'd like to take this business away from truckers".
Considering the merchandise will still have to go on rubber tires between the end of the rails and its final destination, what are you really offering the customer that they don't already have?
In other words, other than "cheap", what incentive is there? And how motivated for "cheap" is UP likely to be, for such a short haul?
SD60MAC9500Here's a link to UP transit times for intermodal. While there's no LA-LV. There is LV-LA container service that get's PU by a stack service originating from UP's G2. In the search box put Las Vegas for origin then put Los Angeles for destination. Look at the transit time that pops up, and this will give you one of the clues to why LA-LV domestic service doesn't exist.. https://c02.my.uprr.com/fpa/intermodal-schedules/#/
Using that UP link - it appears that Las Vegas doesn't receive Intermodal service from any of the origins listed in the link and the ONLY outbound destination for traffic from Las Vegas is Los Angeles.
Convicted One What are the distribution patterns of the retailers serving Las Vegas? For instance if Dollar General already has it set up such that it is serving it's LV operations out of San Bernardino, I'm not sure how much of a benefit they would perceive from UP offering "hey, we'd like to take this business away from truckers". Considering the merchandise will still have to go on rubber tires between the end of the rails and its final destination, what are you really offering the customer that they don't already have?
I don't think there is enough "meat" there, for UP to even work up an appetite. Maybe 60 years ago.....but nowdays I suspect the potential is so small that they concede the business to truckers.
I just googled Dollar General and Walmart to see where their DCs are. There aren't that many (considering) and they are well spread out. The thing about LV is that while it's large, it's in a several hundred mile wasteland as far as other, sizeable cities go.
Distribution Centers - Dollar General Careers
Walmart Distribution Center Network USA | MWPVL
Pilot and Loves are putting out warnings of possible diesel shortages by late May 2022. Maybe that will translate to more rail traffic for Lost Wages.
https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15292012/diesel-fuel-shortage-hits-the-northeast-insurance-minimum-increase-stymied-by-insurance-industry-lack-of-data
Convicted Onethey concede the business to truckers.
I hate it when that happens.
BackshopMost major retailers have DCs in the Inland Empire. Using a central point, the distance from San Bernardino to Vegas is only 225 miles. I doubt if LV is a large enough market to require its own DCs.
Well, 225 miles was too short for a rail move. But...
On highway diesel fuel is now averaging $6.46/gallon in California. (I don't doubt that Walmart has negotiated a discount. They're good at doing that.)
$6.46/gallon = $1.00/mile in trucking costs. Just for fuel. Add in the fact that Walmart starts it drivers at a minimum of $95,000/year. Moving the freight by truck is wasting scarce resources. Diesel fuel and driver hours. Plus the cost of a highway tractor is through the roof these days. So maybe, just maybe, there's an opportunity for rail here. Things have changed.
An additional fact. There are some indications that the market for freight is going down. Things always change and we all have to deal with the changes.
greyhoundsI hate it when that happens.
Well, to my eye it looks like the railroads have gone out of their way to shed low volume business.
Exorbitant switch maintenance fees, and other tools of pain.
I really think that LA-LAV business, with all the work it takes t keep customers happy (we need 5 containers, 3 times a week, and they can NEVER be late, etc)
I suspect the RR's are glad to not have to fool with a lot of it
Once again, what would the operating ratio of this proposed new service be? And how does the time and cost of developing the technology and convincing the regulators to ok it figure into the OR calculation?
If the OR isn't below 60 then I bet UP won't be interested.
You've professed your love for Hunter Harrison and his brand of so-called PSR on multiple occasions over the years. Now all the Class I's are doing some version of it. Happy?
All this talk of self-driving Brandt road/rail trucks and overgrown automated slip coaches completely ignores the KISS principle. If you want to initiate LA-LV intermodal on an existing priority train just put the cars on the tail end and have a utility employee or yard crew do the coupling/uncoupling and EOT moving work while the road crews are trading off (I'm presuming Las Vegas is a crew change point for UP). Large terminals should have these guys on duty anyway, unless PSR got rid of them all.
If you need another locomotive to move the LA-LV block around just use anything that's DP capable. We get SD70s, Dash-9s and other newer high-horsepower units on short little locals on a regular basis because they happen to be available, surely the same could be done at UP. Or if the chosen unit isn't DP capable just set it up for dead haul while it's in the middle of the train, and this would also get around the need to set up or knock down DP and go through all the tests.
Or you could make it even simpler and put this intermodal traffic on a local or manifest that already has work at Las Vegas anyway..... ...it won't break any speed records but it should still be cheaper than trucking. This is what CN does for Vancouver-Calgary intermodal traffic, which also takes the scenic route via Edmonton. We can't compete with CP or trucks on a speed or distance basis, yet there is still a fair amount of this traffic. Of course it's all going to or from a boat in Vancouver, so an extra 12, 24 or 48 hours isn't exactly a deal breaker for this stuff.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Of course, the whole point of this and your other threads seems to be to come up with ways to eliminate employees altogether. So everything I just wrote is irrelevant.
Erik_MagOne chemical of interest being ammoniun perchlorate... A couple of the biggest customers for that are located in Magna and Promontory Utah.
That stuff is rocket fuel - presumably the customer in Utah is Thiokol. Here's what happened to a place called Pepcon that made ammonium perchlorate at Henderson, NV - just outside Lost Wages - about 30 years ago. The video is from a TV repair crew that was working on a TV antenna on a hill that overlooked Pepcon.
https://youtu.be/cPVpzjxRjPk
And to keep this railroad related, we take you to Murdoch, IL in 1983. Watch for the flying tank car
https://youtu.be/gRP5FeYenuI
1) The way things are
2) Change
BEAUSABRE That stuff is rocket fuel - presumably the customer in Utah is Thiokol.
That stuff is rocket fuel - presumably the customer in Utah is Thiokol.
AP is the oxidizer for many formulations of solid rocket propelant. Customer in Utah is Northrop Grumman, who bought Alliant Techsytems, who bought Hercules powder (Magna) and Thiokol (Promontory). I've made several trips to the Magna site back in the Hercules/ATK days. The local LDS church that's sited next to the plant boundary was instucted not to have any glass facing the plant.
The AP blast in Henderson, NV was spectacular, reminded me of aerial shots of underground nuke tests.
And to keep this railroad related, we take you to Murdoch, IL in 1983. Watch for the flying tank car https://youtu.be/gRP5FeYenuI
Which Tree refers to as BLEVE's.
greyhounds So, if I try to (just for grins) come up with a reasonable plan to make rail competitive at a shorter distance the same folks who decry the loss of market share go nuts about the proposed changes. To make rail competitive at shorter distances costs must be removed from the rail operations. A way to do that is through automation. Such as having a robot set the hand brakes. Such a thought drives the Luddites nuts.
1. You don't do it "just for grins". You do it to lord over us that you're a "marketing professional"
2. You didn't do enough research to even know that the distance wasn't LA-LV but IE-LV.
3. Automation isn't always cheaper than a Mark 1 human being. How many handbrake setting robots would have to be produced to amortize development costs?
4. We're not "luddites", we're "realists". You're trying to solve today's problems with technology that doesn't even exist.
greyhounds OK, this was interesting. People come on this forum and complain that railroads are losing market share to truckers. And that is true. But most freight moves shorter distances and that favors the economics of trucking. And that results in the loss of rail market share. So, if I try to (just for grins) come up with a reasonable plan to make rail competitive at a shorter distance the same folks who decry the loss of market share go nuts about the proposed changes. There are two things people don’t like: 1) The way things are 2) Change And we’ve seen that here. To make rail competitive at shorter distances costs must be removed from the rail operations. A way to do that is through automation. Such as having a robot set the hand brakes. Such a thought drives the Luddites nuts. But they offer no solution to the issue. To have the regular old switch crew go out there and do it just doesn't prove up.
When you say LA-LV do you mean IPI(inland point intermodal which means the freight travels intact from vessel to receiver without transload)?
Or does this freight travel in domestic 53's from transload to the LV market?
Matter of fact.. Jeff if you read this I'm sure you handle stack trains across your division from G2 to the West Coast. Does your manifest show you the containers destination? If so would you be able to inform us on how many containers are headed to Las Vegas?
SD60MAC9500 greyhounds OK, this was interesting. People come on this forum and complain that railroads are losing market share to truckers. And that is true. But most freight moves shorter distances and that favors the economics of trucking. And that results in the loss of rail market share. So, if I try to (just for grins) come up with a reasonable plan to make rail competitive at a shorter distance the same folks who decry the loss of market share go nuts about the proposed changes. There are two things people don’t like: 1) The way things are 2) Change And we’ve seen that here. To make rail competitive at shorter distances costs must be removed from the rail operations. A way to do that is through automation. Such as having a robot set the hand brakes. Such a thought drives the Luddites nuts. But they offer no solution to the issue. To have the regular old switch crew go out there and do it just doesn't prove up. When you say LA-LV do you mean IPI(inland point intermodal which means the freight travels intact from vessel to receiver without transload)? Or does this freight travel in domestic 53's from transload to the LV market? Matter of fact.. Jeff if you read this I'm sure you handle stack trains across your division from G2 to the West Coast. Does your manifest show you the containers destination? If so would you be able to inform us on how many containers are headed to Las Vegas?
In viewing the UP's own 'Intermodal Calculator'. The ONLY intermodal shown that affects Las Vegas is movement from Las Vegas to LA with a travel time of 3 days.
No Origin in that calculator shows Las Vegas as a Destination.
I have no idea what information beyond equipment initials and numbers are shown on UP (or for that matter any carrier other than CSX). On CSX destination cities were constricted to 9 characters with the USPS recognized two character state abbreviations. Shipper and Consignee information was also constricted to 9 characters as decreed by rules that defined how to utilize those 9 characters.
The other thing to remember, the Carriers, view train consist information as proprietary data and not for public disclosure.
greyhoundsThere are two things people don’t like: 1) The way things are 2) Change And we’ve seen that here. To make rail competitive at shorter distances costs must be removed from the rail operations. A way to do that is through automation. Such as having a robot set the hand brakes. Such a thought drives the Luddites nuts. But they offer no solution to the issue. To have the regular old switch crew go out there and do it just doesn't prove up.
I am often critical of your posts but on this I tend to agree. Recapturing some lost traffic is necessary for a variety of reasons but once again a myriad of objections are raised. At the core, however, is the refrain, "Change is too damn hard. and "Our current jobs will change or even disappear."
BaltACD SD60MAC9500 greyhounds OK, this was interesting. People come on this forum and complain that railroads are losing market share to truckers. And that is true. But most freight moves shorter distances and that favors the economics of trucking. And that results in the loss of rail market share. So, if I try to (just for grins) come up with a reasonable plan to make rail competitive at a shorter distance the same folks who decry the loss of market share go nuts about the proposed changes. There are two things people don’t like: 1) The way things are 2) Change And we’ve seen that here. To make rail competitive at shorter distances costs must be removed from the rail operations. A way to do that is through automation. Such as having a robot set the hand brakes. Such a thought drives the Luddites nuts. But they offer no solution to the issue. To have the regular old switch crew go out there and do it just doesn't prove up. When you say LA-LV do you mean IPI(inland point intermodal which means the freight travels intact from vessel to receiver without transload)? Or does this freight travel in domestic 53's from transload to the LV market? Matter of fact.. Jeff if you read this I'm sure you handle stack trains across your division from G2 to the West Coast. Does your manifest show you the containers destination? If so would you be able to inform us on how many containers are headed to Las Vegas? In viewing the UP's own 'Intermodal Calculator'. The ONLY intermodal shown that affects Las Vegas is movement from Las Vegas to LA with a travel time of 3 days. No Origin in that calculator shows Las Vegas as a Destination. I have no idea what information beyond equipment initials and numbers are shown on UP (or for that matter any carrier other than CSX). On CSX destination cities were constricted to 9 characters with the USPS recognized two character state abbreviations. Shipper and Consignee information was also constricted to 9 characters as decreed by rules that defined how to utilize those 9 characters. The other thing to remember, the Carriers, view train consist information as proprietary data and not for public disclosure.
Balt use this link..
https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@customers/documents/up_pdf_nativedocs/pdf_up_inter_cont-matrix.pdf
In the matrix there is a block from G2(Chicago) to Las Vegas. The LV traffic gets setout from an exisitng train. I'm just curioius if LV is getting most of its durable goods by rail from the East Coast.
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