BNSF shuttle grain trains, Does this mean that BNSF does not want to serve small elevators?

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by arbfbe

The capitalization of the tracks and other facilities to all of these smaller elevators has been paid off long ago. In the example of the elevator at Big Sandy. MT these 'small' elevators are not so small either. So you have the captitalization of the grain hoppers to consider. Grain companies have shown a willingness to invest in their own fleet of cars but when they do the railroads change the rate structure wiping out the shippers investment in short order. You can see this has happpened over and over again. Where are the fleets of cars once owned or leased by Con Agra, CArgill and Pillsbury? The railroads cried underutilized grain car fleets but when the shippers bought their own cars to stand the costs of the downtime themselves the railroads bemoaned the loss of earnings from the use of their cars and cut the discount for shipper supplied cars.

Alan, this sums up the dilemma of dealing with these railroads.

The Railroads complain about this and complain about that, and then as soon as the shippers take positive steps to make their own capital investment to overcome the alleged "problem", the railroads themselves change the rules.

That's not capitalism, that's exploitation.

For the wheat industry, there is no "cooperative" long term planning with the rail industry. The rail industry has shown no inclination to honor any committment, nor make any. How they might then expect farmers and shippers to invest in, or banks to finance, a $30 million shuttle elevator like the one at Shelby, or invest in a private car fleet, is an interesting question.

Is the rail industry, which treats its captive customers like chattel, the cause of its own problems?

The Big Sandy elevator is a good example.

Alan, are you going to the Retired Milw Employee's Picinic August 7 in Deer Lodge? I've got my invite/notice here on the desk. On the one hand, I still enjoy these thngs, but they get more depressing with each passing year, as the old faces grow fewer in number. With Rusty Landers' passing, I guess Allan Peterson will be the only remaining Electrification Dept guy there.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[bobwilcox]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

BNSF turns down the opportunity to serve smaller elevators simply because they can more money easier somewhere else.

This does not appear to be true. The revenue received from the "smaller" elevators appears to be among the highest revenues received on the BNSF system. These revenues are received where operating costs are among the lowest.

If your thesis is true, where is your proof?

Bobwilcox wants to see "business experience." While I have seen no studies that suggest that "business experience" equates with intelligence or intelligent decision making, I am asking for data to support these "rants" because I think data is important. See footnote 1.

Why is the "easier" money made elsewhere? What is your specific basis for this statement?

Or is it a "rant"? See Footnote 2.

Best regards, Michael Sol

Footnote 1: [See, if you wish, Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps that Lead to Debacles, by Paul McNutt, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002. "Half of business decisions fail because of management blunders," new study finds. "Vast sums of money are spent to make decisons that realize no ultimate value for the organization, and managers make the same mistakes over and over again as they formulate the decisions."]

Footnote 2. [ "Mergers have permitted rail networks to operate more efficiently than previously, but that those mergers have also reduced scale economies by creating firms of larger than efficient size."

The largest modern class I railroads are beyond optimally efficient operating size, and are suffering significant cost penalties as a result of diseconomies of scale which are structurally inherent in transportation organizations of this size. Chapin and Schmidt, "Do Mergers Improve Efficiency?" Journal of Transportation Economics and Policy, 1998, 33:2, 147-62.]

"Business experience" would tell you that these railroads are fundamentally unsound and making unsound decisions. Or is it something besides mere "business experience" that is necessary to understand that?

Take a deep breath.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

To FM:
If sufficient profit is only one cent above cost, then you don't expect as high a return on investment as most businessmen and investors. If you consider that to be sufficient return, don't expect to remain in business for too long because you're not generating enough capital to keep yourself competitive.

"...don't exepct to remain ..." . This conclusion is based on what?

One of the most "competitive" industries, retail grocery, routinely has profits in the neighborhood of 0.6-1.5%., this has been so since WWII, and not only is the industry still around, but many of the old names are still there.

Where do these broad generalities and erroneous conclusions come from?

Best regards, Michael Sol

[arbfbe]

The capitalization of the tracks and other facilities to all of these smaller elevators has been paid off long ago. In the example of the elevator at Big Sandy. MT these 'small' elevators are not so small either. So you have the captitalization of the grain hoppers to consider. Grain companies have shown a willingness to invest in their own fleet of cars but when they do the railroads change the rate structure wiping out the shippers investment in short order. You can see this has happpened over and over again. Where are the fleets of cars once owned or leased by Con Agra, CArgill and Pillsbury? The railroads cried underutilized grain car fleets but when the shippers bought their own cars to stand the costs of the downtime themselves the railroads bemoaned the loss of earnings from the use of their cars and cut the discount for shipper supplied cars. Any railroad that tells customers they have grain hoppers idle for most of the year is not telling the truth. The grain market has evolved into a year around shipping season and the railroads know it.

The issues here are not return on investment and cost of service, they are market domination and rail line abandonment. Those goals carry their own financial return which can be substantial.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

To FM:
If sufficient profit is only one cent above cost, then you don't expect as high a return on investment as most businessmen and investors. If you consider that to be sufficient return, don't expect to remain in business for too long because you're not generating enough capital to keep yourself competitive.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

BNSF turns down the opportunity to serve smaller elevators simply because they can more money easier somewhere else.

This does not appear to be true. The revenue received from the "smaller" elevators appears to be among the highest revenues received on the BNSF system. These revenues are received where operating costs are among the lowest.

If your thesis is true, where is your proof?

Bobwilcox wants to see "business experience." While I have seen no studies that suggest that "business experience" equates with intelligence or intelligent decision making, I am asking for data to support these "rants" because I think data is important. See footnote 1.

Why is the "easier" money made elsewhere? What is your specific basis for this statement?

Or is it a "rant"? See Footnote 2.

Best regards, Michael Sol

Footnote 1: [See, if you wish, Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps that Lead to Debacles, by Paul McNutt, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002. "Half of business decisions fail because of management blunders," new study finds. "Vast sums of money are spent to make decisons that realize no ultimate value for the organization, and managers make the same mistakes over and over again as they formulate the decisions."]

Footnote 2. [ "Mergers have permitted rail networks to operate more efficiently than previously, but that those mergers have also reduced scale economies by creating firms of larger than efficient size."

The largest modern class I railroads are beyond optimally efficient operating size, and are suffering significant cost penalties as a result of diseconomies of scale which are structurally inherent in transportation organizations of this size. Chapin and Schmidt, "Do Mergers Improve Efficiency?" Journal of Transportation Economics and Policy, 1998, 33:2, 147-62.]

"Business experience" would tell you that these railroads are fundamentally unsound and making unsound decisions. Or is it something besides mere "business experience" that is necessary to understand that?

[Anonymous]

OF COURSE businesses turn down business all the time if it is of insufficient utility. They simply respond to underlying macroeconomic factors in deciding their microeconomic reach (tragic example: in the late 1970s investing in Treasuries or money markets made more money than most ROI, so the economy froze shut). Or, to use the homely metaphor, many time businesses will stick to the core and keep the bird in the hand instead of going for the two in the bush...

I can't tell you how many times in my life I've talked to moving van companies or full-service garages or photo restorers or telephone operators and been told something along the likes of "I'd be happy to do it for you, but the price I'd have to charge would be prohibitive and unfair to you because (your household furnishings are below the normal minimum weight we charge/ we're not set up to do oil changes/ we specialize in weddings and group pictures, not the individual snap/ direcf dialing is now so commonplace that we operators aren't even supposed to put calls through except in an emergency situation) . . . So in your case I'd advise (Hiring a Ryder truck and part-time help/ going to Jiffy Lube/ trying a shop that advertises it works with small orders/ dialing it yourself, one plus area code plus number . . . ).

If anyone wants to say any particular railroad is shortsighted or doesn't know how to do minamax equations or is too conservative with its capital, then fine. But it's their decision! All I can say is from what I've seen railroads are much less monopolistic than in the 19th Century and much less limited than in the pre-Staggers ICC era of the 20th Century--what is noticeable here is that the tenor of the conversation is not that one particular farmer or rancher is left high and dry, but alternate technologies (and I include the Interstate Highway System among them) leave other modes more attractive. Besides, if the railroad mgmt is so idiotic, why on earth would any government out to preserve itself try to FORCE that railroad into an operation at which it obviously does NOT excel. I'm not a total libertarian, government doesn't always guess wrong about economic development, but the point is they do have to guess, they don't have profit motives, careers and restive shareholders to worry about.

I own a small amount of stock in the Norfolk Southern and they've been very good to me in answering my ignorant questions. And you know what? Better me than the federal government.

[bobwilcox]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal
[ It is sufficiently profitable to those who deal with real competition each day.

Before you continue with another rant about the evil BNSF how about letting us know exactly what real business competition you personally have ever dealt with. I think the answer is you never have but I look forward to knowing more about your business experience.

[Murphy Siding]

BNSF turns down the opportunity to serve smaller elevators simply because they can more money easier somewhere else. It's called capitalism and it's what makes our economy go round.

[jeaton]

Oh then, capacity is irrelevant? Rant it is.

[Anonymous]

"...not pursuing business"! What a concept. Only works when one has monopoly power.

Let's also clarify. Truckers are NOT more price competitive than railroads. I haven't seen too many situations outside shorthaul corridors where nominal truck rates were lower than nominal rail rates. When we say that truckers are more "responsive", it simply means they're actually doing what the railroads in theory should be doing. It's not a situation of the railroad not covering their costs or not making "sufficient" profit (Hey, CSSH....., define "sufficient" profit. Is it 10% above costs? 20%? 100%? The answer is: Exactly one penny above all cost allocations. BTW, it's only a "rant" to those who don't have the cognitive ability to derive logic and reason). Rather, it's what every single economists predicts would happen when a monopoly market is created. Monopolists are very inefficient in their business approach, and this begins to show in examples of them turning down perfectly profitable business opportunities.

BNSF turns down the opportunity to serve smaller elevators because they engender monopoly characteristics, not because such service is "not sufficiently profitable". It is sufficiently profitable to those who deal with real competition each day.

[Anonymous]

Gotta go with Hegewisch on this one. Because truckers are "more responsive to the desires of the shipper," that MAKES them more competitive. Or, if the railroads bow out and only truckers remain, then their only competition is fellow truckers.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

FM: In your ongoing rant in favor of seizing private property in the name of "open (?) access", you have implied that it is the duty of management to go after every last piece of business available. As has been pointed out in other threads, a firm may opt not to pursue certain business opportunities because they may not cover costs or may not be sufficiently profitable. Small grain elevators, small lumber yards that ship primarily by truck, etc. may be more bother than they're worth to a railroad.

The reason a railroad is in business is to make a buck for the shareholders. If turning down certain business improves the rate of return for the shareholders, then it is the duty of management to make that decision.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

In our part of the country, a lot of farm commodities are shipped out on trucks because the trucks are more competitive than rail. In a perfect world, every shipper in a free market country would deserve competitve bidding on the movement of their agricultural products. Competition requires 2 or more parties bidding on the price. It makes little difference if the 2 bidders are railroads,or trucks,or barges,or Great Lake freighters.

I would venture a guess that those farm commodities are shipped out by truck because the truckers are more responsive to the desires of the shipper, not necessarily because they are more competitive. In the perfect world, trucks would only be used to haul the commodities from the farm to the nearest railhead. There was a time when railroads were more responsive to the desires of shippers, but then again there were more railroads to go around. Now, our economy takes a hit every time something is shipper out by truck long distance rather than rail because the greatly diminished closed access rail system has skewed the natural transportation market.

And rather than "two or more", de facto competition starts with three or more. It's called the theory of triopoly.

[Murphy Siding]

In our part of the country, a lot of farm commodities are shipped out on trucks because the trucks are more competitive than rail. In a perfect world, every shipper in a free market country would deserve competitve bidding on the movement of their agricultural products. Competition requires 2 or more parties bidding on the price. It makes little difference if the 2 bidders are railroads,or trucks,or barges,or Great Lake freighters.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

They have it, unfortunately, it's called a truck.

Hardly.

Calling a truck the competitive alternative to railcar service is like calling a Volkswagon bug the competitive alternative to the Greyhound bus. When dealing in bulk quantities, you need competitive access to more than one form of transporting bulk commodities. When rail shippers are captive to one railroad, they do not have access to a competitive alternative in the form of the truck. Rather, they are utilizing the nickel and dime alternative to the million dollar problem.

[Murphy Siding]

They have it, unfortunately, it's called a truck.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by smalling_60626

I'd love to hear what the farmers, or those with rural connections, have to say about this important and stimulating topic.

Farmers want access to competitive bidding for the movement of their agricultural output. That's nothing less than what every shipper in a free market country deserves.

[Anonymous]

I'd love to hear what the farmers, or those with rural connections, have to say about this important and stimulating topic.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

The truth is, the idea of open access is new, perhaps too new to have entered into legislative debates. Part of the problem is that the entities that should be be introducing the topic into the lexicon of public debate (such as those organizations that represent captive rail shippers) seem to rather prefer to reha***he concept of reregulation, a lose-lose proposition for both sides. Meanwhile, the Class I propoganda arm (know collectively as the AAR) did a pretty good job of misrepresenting the open access debate when it was just budding during the late 1990's. If history is any lesson, it will take some kind of economic catastrophy involving railroad/shipper relations before the topic will be able to take it's rightful place in the halls of Congress. Meaning alot of people on both sides have to be hurt financially before Congress will act. So much for the idea of pre-emptive economic policy foresight.

I think your correct about Congress not wanting to get involved untill there is a crisis. There was a lot of blah, blah, blah about the banckrupt Penn Central untill GM, Ford and Chrysler went to a Senate hearing and gave their lay off forecast if PC stopped operations. It was about 10,000 people in the first week with the collapse of the auto industry within 90 days. Since laid off UAW members tend to vote in their spare time, we got CR legislation very shortly after that hearing.

The ideas put into Staggers were just think tank stuff untill CR management told Congress deregulation would allow CR to stand on there own and thereby reduce the Federal deficit. Since that was back in a day when someone actually cared about the deficit Staggers was passed within a few months.

The 35 year soap opera concerning Amtrak funding is just absurb. Recently the Amtrak board put out a very good plan to start a serious discussion but everyone in the White House and Congress did the same old dance. I am worried that Amtrak will lose its ability to attrack good leadership and we will go back to the "glide path to self sufficiency" bipartisine silliness of the 1990s.

If you do not know about Asa Whitney I suggest you look him up in David Bain's Empire Express , ISBN 0-670-80889-x. He was a tireless promoter of a transcontintal railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. Everyone else thought it was a pipe dream. How would it be financed? In 1843 he proposed the novel idea to Congress that the government pay for a railroad with land grants. He spoke tirelessly about a Transcontiental RR. He was the force that caused the Army surveys in the 1850s. He was the one that pushed his ideas into the Republican Party's first platform. He withdrew into private life but he lived to see the golden spike at Promontory.

The Class I have not made their cost of capital for over 75 years. Therefore the country is way behind in its rail plant investment. Someday it will come to a head. Asa Whitney did not have the internet to sell his ideas but you do...

It amazes me on how dependent the automotive industry is on the railroads.....But the automobile industry lobbys for more money to be spent on roads and not railroads...

[Anonymous]

Last week a man (old enough and of a background to know) told me that the UP was offering farmers in his area an extra ten cents per bushel if they would haul this season's corn to the UP's own granaries (elevators, I suppose) and bypass their local elevators.

If this rumor is true, it must make local elevator ops. really angry but might please the farmers (an extra dime for a bushel of any grain is a lot). While I feel for the local elevator owners, let's not forget that a lot of these "local" facilities are owned by the likes of Cargill and Bunge; so that kind of competition vis-a-vis BNSF would not always be the David-and-Goliath battle we might at first envision.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

Let us NOT get Amtrak into this argument, and remember that no country in the world really runs intercity passenger trains at a profit. Yes, the British have operators making a profit on running certain intercity trains, but that is only because the infrastructure is subisidized under a serparate account.

The idea that passenger trains cannot run at a profit is a quasi-myth, if only because we have few modern day equivalents of private passenger rail opertations in areas where there is a significant degree of cost equalization regarding the infrastructure. Passenger trains in the U.S. did make money until the speed advantage was lost to autos, buses, and airlines, and even now there are a few examples of tourist trains making money in the U.S., so it certainly isn't impossible to have profitable passenger rail operations where the logistics and target markets are in line with realities.

There is no reason that the right kind of passenger rail operations cannot pay their fully allocated costs and still come up in the black. But we're getting away from the topic thread..........

[daveklepper]

Let us NOT get Amtrak into this argument, and remember that no country in the world really runs intercity passenger trains at a profit. Yes, the British have operators making a profit on running certain intercity trains, but that is only because the infrastructure is subisidized under a serparate account.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173

1. Clarify your use of $924 for breakeven per carload.
2. Does that $924 BE apply to grain? If I read correctly it is a system BE.
3. If that is correct, then the consumer product segment, based on your assumption of 1.6 "units" per carload would then be profitable....on the system BE point, and not unprofitable as you indicated.

Well, intermodal is part chicken and part duck. Is it a unit, or two units? Is it one carload, or two?

BNSF I think has resolved the question in favor of treating intermodal in the same fashion as a carload. One unit equals a carload. This is no doubt a result of resolving the significant handling requirements for intermodal. Each container requires direct human intervention to load, and direct human intervention to unload. Each "carload" then requires four direct human actions to achieve railroad transportation, that is, getting the container on the vehicle that will transport it, and then getting it off at its destination, twice for two containers.

An accounting function is to rationalize human activities by translating them into economic terms so that they are comparable. Intermodal being labor intensive compared to, oh, say, grain haulage.

I would guess that in early discussions about whether to define the unit of economic activity as a "unit" or as a "carload," in regard to intermodal, railroad accountants observed that intermodal was treated more accurately, both from a cost and a revenue perspective, as discrete units, and that these were comparable with a conventional "carload."

The semantic problem is that two are loaded onto a "car". But, as we see, railroads don't treat that as a carload. The cost function is considerably different than for a conventional carload.

So, when we see "units/carloads" we see railroading's effort to apply accounting consistency to two different ways of hauling things by rail. That is, an intermodal "unit" is equivalent to railroading's other method of measure, the "carload."

That's been the problem with intermodal. Two units require four direct human interventions, loading and unloading, then four more direct human interventions on the empty haul back. ATSF began to turn the empty haulbacks around by "aggressive pricing" to induce Ag and Industrial users to use containers for exports. Everybody followed. Everybody knows what "aggressive pricing" means.

Milwaukee was a pioneer on intermodal and aggressively built its market share around intermodal to the PNW. Intermodal was a classic example of "disruptive technology," which follows a pattern of an innovation that is typically less profitable than what came before, but which permits 1) a larger overall market to develop (think: computer Hard Drives) and 2) a smaller, more agile company can develop into a market leader (think Toyota vs. GM).

If anyone is interested in doing an MBA case study, Milwaukee Road's exploitation of intermodal is a classic example of taking a disruptive technology and running with it. Milwaukee almost pulled it off. But, even at Milwaukee, there were dissenters to the strategy.

In 1966, T.G. Swartzlander presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Railroad Superintendents, "TOFC -- Pigs for Profit." Swartzlander was Pennsylvania RR's superintendent of "Truc-Train" operations. Pigs were, he offered, the "most dynamic subject in railroading."

R.R. Brown, Milwaukee Road's General Superintendent, was skeptical. "I don't know what we are getting into with this TOFC. ... I am old-fashioned enough a railroad man to believe that the bread-and-butter of the railroad business is the box car."

Swartzlander: "Oh, that really hurts, sir."

Best regards, Michael Sol

[dblink02]

Here in Burlington, WI the CN's former WC has a relatively small co-op elevator that ships 25 carloads of corn, twice a month to Chicago where it is trurned into corn syrup for Pepsi-Co. They are force to pay a $600 per train, fuel surcharge. Ths CN's reason for this is that they have to send an extra locomotive down from Fon du Lac that would otherwise not be necessary. Plus, all of the cars owned by non-CN railroads or leased cars, that sit on the loading track, they are charged a fee for that as well. They are even considering extending the loading track to serve the loader faster, but CN is reluctant to pay for any of it even though it will mean faster loading, which will mean as many as 2-3 more trainloads per month. In Whitewater,WI, the same Co-op is served by the WSOR and they have no such problems. The WSOR picked-up almost the entire tab for the xtension to the loading track that was recently made there.
On a side note, the Co-op manager I talked too said they had similar trouble with the SOO when they owned the line, but had no trouble at all with the WC.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by arbfbe

futuremodal,

Now that the US Supreme court has loosened the rules against immenent domain, perhaps the states, counties or even a city or two can sieze the tracks in their neighborhood to allow public access and open access in order to increase their revenues.

More than likely, the local governments would use this new right of eminent domain to take out a rail line and put in a strip mall. Commercial developments tend to generate more tax revenue than private transportation ROW's.

But, in reality, I don't think you can use eminent domain to take over property that originally came about via eminent domain. Whose right of eminent domain would the courts exonerate? Can one fight an edict of eminent domain with their own eminent domain edict? Back and forth, back and forth, and the winner is the one with the best paid lawyers.

The Supreme Court may have really opened up a Pandora's Box on this one!

[bobwilcox]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

The truth is, the idea of open access is new, perhaps too new to have entered into legislative debates. Part of the problem is that the entities that should be be introducing the topic into the lexicon of public debate (such as those organizations that represent captive rail shippers) seem to rather prefer to reha***he concept of reregulation, a lose-lose proposition for both sides. Meanwhile, the Class I propoganda arm (know collectively as the AAR) did a pretty good job of misrepresenting the open access debate when it was just budding during the late 1990's. If history is any lesson, it will take some kind of economic catastrophy involving railroad/shipper relations before the topic will be able to take it's rightful place in the halls of Congress. Meaning alot of people on both sides have to be hurt financially before Congress will act. So much for the idea of pre-emptive economic policy foresight.

I think your correct about Congress not wanting to get involved untill there is a crisis. There was a lot of blah, blah, blah about the banckrupt Penn Central untill GM, Ford and Chrysler went to a Senate hearing and gave their lay off forecast if PC stopped operations. It was about 10,000 people in the first week with the collapse of the auto industry within 90 days. Since laid off UAW members tend to vote in their spare time, we got CR legislation very shortly after that hearing.

The ideas put into Staggers were just think tank stuff untill CR management told Congress deregulation would allow CR to stand on there own and thereby reduce the Federal deficit. Since that was back in a day when someone actually cared about the deficit Staggers was passed within a few months.

The 35 year soap opera concerning Amtrak funding is just absurb. Recently the Amtrak board put out a very good plan to start a serious discussion but everyone in the White House and Congress did the same old dance. I am worried that Amtrak will lose its ability to attrack good leadership and we will go back to the "glide path to self sufficiency" bipartisine silliness of the 1990s.

If you do not know about Asa Whitney I suggest you look him up in David Bain's Empire Express , ISBN 0-670-80889-x. He was a tireless promoter of a transcontintal railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. Everyone else thought it was a pipe dream. How would it be financed? In 1843 he proposed the novel idea to Congress that the government pay for a railroad with land grants. He spoke tirelessly about a Transcontiental RR. He was the force that caused the Army surveys in the 1850s. He was the one that pushed his ideas into the Republican Party's first platform. He withdrew into private life but he lived to see the golden spike at Promontory.

The Class I have not made their cost of capital for over 75 years. Therefore the country is way behind in its rail plant investment. Someday it will come to a head. Asa Whitney did not have the internet to sell his ideas but you do...

[Murphy Siding]

arbfbe: huh? ? Maybe the local governments would be able to claim eminent domain on the existing tracks and sieze them, to sell them to a developer who would build tracks that would generate more tax dollars? I guess I'm following the logic on that line of thinking. Can you explain please? Thanks!

[arbfbe]

futuremodal,

Now that the US Supreme court has loosened the rules against immenent domain, perhaps the states, counties or even a city or two can sieze the tracks in their neighborhood to allow public access and open access in order to increase their revenues.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds

Comparing the revenue per unit on an intermodal shipment with the revenue per unit on a grain shipment is not valid.

I have no idea what this means.

It should be noted, "intermodal" is not a profit center on BNSF. No such thing.

Grain intermodal exists, and is reported in the Ag Group, as a "grain shipment," not in the Consumer Group. "Industrial" intermodal also exists, and is reported in the Industrial Group, not the Consumer Group. Indeed, grain, corn and soybeans, in containers, are uses for the Consumer Group containers on the return leg, as a credit to a "grain shipment." The Ag Group gets the credit, not the Consumer Group. There is no "Intermodal Group."

What is misleading is to say that "grain shipments" are entirely different than "intermodal shipments" because that is not true. Ag products ship intermodal on BNSF. The United States does not ship a lot of Consumer Group goods back insofar as Import/Export is concerned, but does ship Ag and Industrial. Ag and Industrial exports are what balance out Consumer imports, insofar as intermodal is concerned.

Greyhounds, would you agree or disagree?

Best regards, Michael Sol