QUOTE: Yup.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol Milwaukee Road total Federal Government transfers, 1977-1984: $102,951,000. Illinois Central Gulf total Federal Government transfers 1977-1987: $198,145,000. ICG received 192% more direct federal subsidy than Milwaukee Road.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 I have always maintained that if I were negotiating the Montana wheat rates (for the farmers), I would use a method of tying that freight into a much larger pool of traffic. Large agricultural concerns such as Cargil, ADM, etc possibly have, or should have much favorable rates, based on mileage. Darn, I wish I had gotten my MBA! ed
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds The Milwaukee was a basket case that went broke. Extending their pricing strategy to the rest of the world through assumption is quite a stretch. ICC Chairman Daniel K. O'Neal testified to the US Senate in January, 1978 that there were four railroad "basket cases," the Rock Island, the Illinois Central Gulf, The Milwaukee Road and the North Western, but that the other railroads were not far behind. When Milwaukee petitioned for bankruptcy, it had something like $10 million cash on hand and $38 million accoounts payable. When Stanley Hillman left ICG, it had 0 in the cash drawer and $100 million in accounts payable outstanding. Interestingly, as of December, 1977, the Milwaukee Road was not technically bankrupt, and ICG technically was. Best regards, Michael Sol Well, my paychecks were good. Neat trick with zero cash. ... You might be insolvent, might not be able to pay your bills, but you can't be bankrupt until "The Man" says so. As I said, the ICG never missed a payroll and never went to bankruptcy court. So I guess "technically" we were a going concern. ... But we never missed a payroll and, unlike the Milwaukee Road, we never tucked our tails between our legs and went to court for protection from our creditors.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds The Milwaukee was a basket case that went broke. Extending their pricing strategy to the rest of the world through assumption is quite a stretch. ICC Chairman Daniel K. O'Neal testified to the US Senate in January, 1978 that there were four railroad "basket cases," the Rock Island, the Illinois Central Gulf, The Milwaukee Road and the North Western, but that the other railroads were not far behind. When Milwaukee petitioned for bankruptcy, it had something like $10 million cash on hand and $38 million accoounts payable. When Stanley Hillman left ICG, it had 0 in the cash drawer and $100 million in accounts payable outstanding. Interestingly, as of December, 1977, the Milwaukee Road was not technically bankrupt, and ICG technically was. Best regards, Michael Sol
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds The Milwaukee was a basket case that went broke. Extending their pricing strategy to the rest of the world through assumption is quite a stretch.
QUOTE: QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds And I'm telling you, .... by the amount of subsidies going to the farmers, and by the amount of blaming someone else .... From what I've read here, the BNSF could haul that wheat for free and those farmers would still need to take confiscated money (a subsidy) from the rest of us.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 Supply and demand is quite simple in the case of Montana. There is a demand for transportation services (grain) and very little supply (rail service). Perhaps I put it into too simple of terms to understand, but when there is an abundance of competition (supply of services) the prices will find equilibrium by falling. Happens all the time. "Supply" and "competition", for good reasons, are not the same word. QUOTE: I would like an explanation, tho on the difference between regulated and unregulated business. Well, this is getting ridiculous. The definition you offer makes no allowance for regulated rates prior to Staggers, and argues that the process of rate making is exactly the same as post-Staggers. A statistical analysis shows a considerable difference in the effect of mileage on the rate under regulation as compared to deregulation. Why that might have become a controversial observation to a couple of individuals is a mystery I care little about since the facts speak for themselves. However, since you define the process of rate-making as independent of regulation, there is no point in continuing the conversation. I have no reason based on other exchanges to think you actually believe that, but since you are now offering the idea that rate deregulation had no effect on how rates are actually set, the topic need not include me any more, since I have nothing to offer on that unusual premise. Best regards, Michael Sol
QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 Supply and demand is quite simple in the case of Montana. There is a demand for transportation services (grain) and very little supply (rail service). Perhaps I put it into too simple of terms to understand, but when there is an abundance of competition (supply of services) the prices will find equilibrium by falling. Happens all the time.
QUOTE: I would like an explanation, tho on the difference between regulated and unregulated business.
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Well, this one goes in my book, along with his contention that The Railroad (Milwaukee Road) went broke because it had too much business. So, supply and demand has nothing to do with prices. You could get the Nobel Prize in Economics if you could actually show that.
QUOTE: I think you may have made another "typo". Being bankrupt is a legal condition, not a financial condition. You're not bankrupt until a judge says you're bankrupt.
QUOTE: Originally posted by samfp1943 QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal Yep, just post something about railroad rate gouging, and the ilks will slither up from the cesspool of arrogant idiocy. Sounds like it must be ilk hunting season in montana, do they use stamps or tags? Is ilk hunting with howitzers permitted?
QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal Yep, just post something about railroad rate gouging, and the ilks will slither up from the cesspool of arrogant idiocy.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 Mileage may be the determining factor for a "rate", but the determining the final "cost" will almost always be based on demand and supply. Well, these economic platitudes are starting to wear a little thin. Demand is the greatest where? Supply is the most constricted where? And the rates are the lowest on those corridors, not the highest. QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 ...you just realize the necessity to adjust the throttle. So this explains why rates are lowest where demand is the highest? Well, that is exactly what you are saying. And rates are highest where demand is the lowest because of supply and demand? I have long been puzzled by these frequent simplistic references to "laws" of supply and demand, because they have made just about zero sense in this context. The discussion has been about captive and non-captive shippers. The economic fact of life is that supply and demand has nothing to do with it; it is a matter of market share pricing, rather than cost pricing, which leads to plummeting margins for most traffic, especially where demand is the greatest and capacity supply the lowest which is exactly why the railroads are struggling with excessive demand and inadedquate supply -- because they keep lowering the price, not raising it. Except to certain parts of the system where, ironically, there is little congestion and seemingly, lots of supply of train and track capacity. It does not take an MBA to see that the platitude and the reality are two different things. Best regards, Michael Sol
QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 Mileage may be the determining factor for a "rate", but the determining the final "cost" will almost always be based on demand and supply.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MP173 ...you just realize the necessity to adjust the throttle.
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds The Milwaukee was a basket case that went broke. Extending their pricing strategy to the rest of the world through assumption is quite a stretch. ICC Chairman Daniel K. O'Neal testified to the US Senate in January, 1978 that there were four railroad "basket cases," the Rock Island, the Illinois Central Gulf, The Milwaukee Road and the North Western, but that the other railroads were not far behind. When Milwaukee petitioned for bankruptcy, it had something like $10 million cash on hand and $38 million accoounts payable. When Stanley Hillman left ICG, it had 0 in the cash drawer and $100 million in accounts payable outstanding. Interestingly, as of December, 1977, the Milwaukee Road was not technically bankrupt, and ICG technically was. Best regards, Michael Sol Well, my paychecks were good. Neat trick with zero cash. I think you may have made another "typo". Being bankrupt is a legal condition, not a financial condition. You're not bankrupt until a judge says you're bankrupt. You might be insolvent, might not be able to pay your bills, bt you can't be bankrupt until "The Man" says so. As I said, the ICG never missed a payroll and never went to bankruptcy court. So I guess "technically" we were a going concern. Boy we fought it hard. We ran what I considered to be the best intermodal operation in the country. We went head to head with truckers between Chicago and St. Louis. Our longest realistic haul was 900 miles - and there wasn't much of that. But we never missed a payroll and, unlike the Milwaukee Road, we never tucked our tails between our legs and went to court for protection from our creditors.
QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox CSXT is raising pricessignificantly. The blurg from Train Orders is at http://www.trainorders.com/news/story.php?2900 BNSF, NS and UP should be following.
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds I know we took mileage into consideration, but it was part of a mix and it didn't govern our decisions. And we charged less to move freight north than we did south because the demand for northbound freight was less than the demand for southbound freight. Even if the miles were the same, we charged different rates. On the way to work, I was wondering what on earth this meant. Why look at the price differential on direction, when there are hundreds of price differentials on the same mileage in the same direction, because a railroad hauls different commodities/products at different prices, even over the same distance. Direction has nothing to do with it. There are simply another set of tariffs over the same mileage. Chicago to New Orelans has/had hundreds of tariffs at different rates for the same mileage. Does that change the statistical relationship between each tariff and the mileage? Not one bit. The "standard error" is a different statistical measure than correlation (r-squared). The strength of statisitical analysis is to be able to measure a relationship that may in fact have offsets up or down for a variety of reasons, but for which a specific factor is still the controlling factor in setting a rate. Greyhounds is discussing a situation which would affect the standard error (in large samples, the standard deviation), not the correlation. The standard error has nothing, or at least little, to do with determining whether or not the rates are set by reference to mileage, only whether or not such rate differentials exist -- which is a completely different measure than correlation. Over very large data sets, a correlation can be very strong, and still have a relatively large standard error, that is, a variety of different rates over the same distance, and a multiple of such distances, all of which ultimately are set by reference to mileage, will yield a statistical analysis that shows exactly that. Which is exactly what linear regression analysis is supposed to do. Best regards, Michael Sol No, I'm not. I'm talking about the fact that the northbound FAK intermodal charges on the ICG, which I put in, were significantly below the corresponding southbound FAK intermodal charges.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds I know we took mileage into consideration, but it was part of a mix and it didn't govern our decisions. And we charged less to move freight north than we did south because the demand for northbound freight was less than the demand for southbound freight. Even if the miles were the same, we charged different rates. On the way to work, I was wondering what on earth this meant. Why look at the price differential on direction, when there are hundreds of price differentials on the same mileage in the same direction, because a railroad hauls different commodities/products at different prices, even over the same distance. Direction has nothing to do with it. There are simply another set of tariffs over the same mileage. Chicago to New Orelans has/had hundreds of tariffs at different rates for the same mileage. Does that change the statistical relationship between each tariff and the mileage? Not one bit. The "standard error" is a different statistical measure than correlation (r-squared). The strength of statisitical analysis is to be able to measure a relationship that may in fact have offsets up or down for a variety of reasons, but for which a specific factor is still the controlling factor in setting a rate. Greyhounds is discussing a situation which would affect the standard error (in large samples, the standard deviation), not the correlation. The standard error has nothing, or at least little, to do with determining whether or not the rates are set by reference to mileage, only whether or not such rate differentials exist -- which is a completely different measure than correlation. Over very large data sets, a correlation can be very strong, and still have a relatively large standard error, that is, a variety of different rates over the same distance, and a multiple of such distances, all of which ultimately are set by reference to mileage, will yield a statistical analysis that shows exactly that. Which is exactly what linear regression analysis is supposed to do. Best regards, Michael Sol
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds I know we took mileage into consideration, but it was part of a mix and it didn't govern our decisions. And we charged less to move freight north than we did south because the demand for northbound freight was less than the demand for southbound freight. Even if the miles were the same, we charged different rates.
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds But you're trying to extend a waybill study of Milwaukee Road traffic to the rest of the rail network, and that's dubious. The Milwaukee was a basket case that went broke. Extending their pricing strategy to the rest of the world through assumption is quite a stretch.
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Which regulated tariffs? If you're going to cite a tariff, then name the tariff. "A" tariff could tell you just about zilch. . A credible linear regression requires as many data points as possible. Which tariff? As many as possible. In this instance, a data set of Milwaukee revenue carloadings including, from actual waybills, distance (from origin and destination) and product. Statistically, that is the relevant data. For a linear regression to assess rate/mileage correlation, rate and mileage is extracted from the data set. A citation to a specific tariff is irrelevant at that point because the linear regression doesn't care: it wants actual, real data. We requested waybill data and that's what we got. Since the purpose of the study was not to determine if Milwaukee waybills matched published tariffs, nor any reason whatsoever to suspect they didn't, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to be looking for individual tariff numbers in a compilation of thousands of waybills no doubt including hundreds of tariffs. At that point in time, it was a safe guess that all such rates were regulated and so there was no question that every single combination of price and distance was governed by a regulated rate. For current pricing on wheat carriage, BNSF Rate Book 4022K was used. Within that rate book are subsets of unregulated and regulated rates, corresponding neatly with competitive and captive shippers. Best regards, Michael Sol
QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds Which regulated tariffs? If you're going to cite a tariff, then name the tariff.
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