BNSF boss says transport system nearing crisis

[Bergie]

First, an excerpt from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

courteous

Main Entry: cour·te·ous

1 : marked by polished manners, gallantry, or ceremonial usage of a court
2 : marked by respect for and consideration of others

synonym see CIVIL
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Second, can you guys please try to act civil to one another? There are plenty of generic, regionalized terms to describe the same action. Is it worth arguing over? No.

Having grown up in a town that had a corn field a mile in any direction from our front door, I can speak from experience that semi tractor trailers (18-wheelers) do indeed go into fields. Remember if it's too wet to take the semi into the field, you don't want to harvest corn or soybeans anyway, because you'll encure more in drying costs. If it is wet and the combine can make it into the field, they'll park it on the adjacent road (if possible).

Now, let's move on. And try not to get into a fight about the color of the sky. [V]

Farmer (and kindergarten cop) Erik, out.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edbenton

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

Combined Federal Agriculture Subsidy/per acre farmed
1995-2004

Illinois $392/acre
Wisconsin, $228
Indiana, $345
Iowa, $402
Ohio, $273
Texas, $98.00
Montana, $58.00

"They can have the data presented to them that they are wrong and yet they refuse to change their opinon."

We'll see how honest edbenton is here, or if he's just full of hot air too ...

Fine lets do teh math a wheat farm in Montana is what 3000-5000 acres the avarge farm in Il isw maybe 300 acres tops. Over that period a farmer in Montana recived 290K while a farmer in IL got 190K in subsidies so who got more money from the goverment do the math next time we do nat have farms the size of the state of Rhode Island here.

Now you're an expert on farming too, ed. How much is the trucker subsidy, anyway? You're the expert on that too, right, how much?

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol
not too many real wheat farmers, I don't care where they're at, have 10 or 15 "semi's" sitting around all year waiting for wheat season .... sorry, got to blow the whistle on this story ...

Michael-How many years did you run a farm?

Going on forty years now.

How long did you?

[edbenton]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

Combined Federal Agriculture Subsidy/per acre farmed
1995-2004

Illinois $392/acre
Wisconsin, $228
Indiana, $345
Iowa, $402
Ohio, $273
Texas, $98.00
Montana, $58.00

"They can have the data presented to them that they are wrong and yet they refuse to change their opinon."

We'll see how honest edbenton is here, or if he's just full of hot air too ...

Fine lets do teh math a wheat farm in Montana is what 3000-5000 acres the avarge farm in Il isw maybe 300 acres tops. Over that period a farmer in Montana recived 290K while a farmer in IL got 190K in subsidies so who got more money from the goverment do the math next time we do nat have farms the size of the state of Rhode Island here.

[edblysard]

Mike, ole hoss, you need to unwind the panties a bit and reread that..."mow" is being used in a general sense of the word, just like "coke" is often used to descripe most soda pops and soft drinks...
You know, like in "lets go get a coke" meaning lets go get sodas...or what ever your mixing in your Jim Beam these days....

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Funny,
We still "mow" hay down here...guess we're just 40 years behind the times.[:D]

Wouldn't surprise me. But a Swather sure makes it easier and faster.

[bobwilcox]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol
not too many real wheat farmers, I don't care where they're at, have 10 or 15 "semi's" sitting around all year waiting for wheat season .... sorry, got to blow the whistle on this story ...

Michael-How many years did you run a farm?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03
Two years ago this summer, 2004, we grew a field of wheat and lost our***on it. What kept things almost marginal was that we BALED the STRAW and sold it after the wheat was picked by the 30,000lb combine which loaded the SEMI right in the FIELD and hauled it up the DIRT road to the gravel road to the river terminal. Which is what EVERYONE else does who has a semi, or any truck for that matter. It gets loaded in the field and driven out to wherever.

Now, I need to ask, since the comment is made "everyone else does who has a semi ..." combined with the remark "we grew a field of wheat ...".

This isn't what I hear to be a "wheat" operation .... I don't hear 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 acres, I don't hear custom cutters, and I don't hear a real experience .... not too many real wheat farmers, I don't care where they're at, have 10 or 15 "semi's" sitting around all year waiting for wheat season .... sorry, got to blow the whistle on this story ...

I was relating personal experience and what I see every day. I can't speak for people in Montana, but I can for Illinois. You took that totally out of context.

And if you guys want to pull the plug on farm subsidies, then the gov't should pull the plug on EVERY government subsidy domestic and foreign, from welfare to any USDA program to tax breaks. Cut 'em all. Level the playing field.

[karldotcom]

The only crisis BNSF is facing is getting all that cash into the bank vault....

[MichaelSol]

Of course, what the statistics actually show is that Texas and Montana farmers are going it on their own already. The subsidies are small. They are supplements, they aren't essential like those farmers that you seem to see on your roadside farming lecture series, who need that government money to buy semis and brand new 40 ton combines and what not. Obviously, they get enough money from the Feds they can pay the local governments to build all those good roads and new bridges I read about above. Now it all makes sense, courtesy of enormous federal subsidies.

No wonder what I see and experience, is so different than what you see.

Pretty interesting to honest folk what big federal subsidies will buy for you complainers from the Midwest, who gripe that everyone else is getting a break ....you hypocrites, at the head of the line on the Federal Food Trough, are the first ones to criticize somebody else.

What the facts show is that Montana farmers do a better job, with less federal money than just about anyone else. Unlike your neck of the woods, they could in fact survive without the federal money; it's just not that much. They must be far more efficient.

And, of course, they would be that much better off if they paid the same cheap rates that Midwestern farmers pay for the same rail service, the same cheap rates subsidized by all the shippers that pay the higher rates.

The ones in Montana that subsidize the wheat growers elsewhere by paying rates 140% above the BNSF system average for wheat transportation.

Oh, I forgot, the "expert" says that's a "subsidy" too, in his perverse book.

Yeah.

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

Didn't hear you complaining when the ICG Railroad got more federal support than nearly any other midwestern railroad, 1975-1987, even including Milwaukee Road. In fact, your salary pretty much was paid out my taxpayer dollars ....

I can't help what you didn't hear.

BUT.

My input was "If you get in bed with the Government, You're going to get ***ed"

[MichaelSol]

Didn't hear you complaining when the ICG Railroad got more federal support than nearly any other midwestern railroad, 1975-1987, even including Milwaukee Road. In fact, your salary pretty much was paid out my taxpayer dollars ....; Montana farmers received about $11,000 per farmer in 2004; ICG received about $38,000 of federal support per employee during the period.

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds
The fact that the Montana wheat farmers absolutely depend on Federal subsidies (money taken from the rest of us actually doing productive work and actually earn our livings) proves that.

Now you work harder than farmers do, and you think you do productive work and they don't?

You and your arrogance take the cake.

Yes, and as you stumbled onto before, Illinois farmers -- the ones in the fields, not the ones sitting on the roadside watching -- get about six times the subsidy per acre as Montana farmers, sucking more money from "the rest of us."

Nice to see you just once again come right out and attack Montana farmers.

That's really what its just all about for you, isn't it? An Arm chair schoolboy with an office job, condescending to people that work hard for a living.

Just really makes you feel good doesn't it?

Well, first off, I don't think that any business, which includes an Illinois farm, should receive a subsidy.

I know I don't work harder than them, but I know I'm more productive than them.

How do I know that? I don't get a government subsidy.

The company I work for pays me more than what it cost me to produce what I produce.

It's not about how hard one works, if it was about that, we'd all be walking behind our mule on 40 acres scratching out a living on a subsistance farm. It's about the ratio of our productivity to our inputs. And I seem to be pretty productive. I produce more than I consume. Which is the reason, and the only reason, that the company I work for pays me to work there.

Which is more than the Montana wheat farmers can claim. They have to have government support, like people on welfare. And, unlike other people on welfare, they don't need to be on welfare.

I understand that if you can not earn a living for good reason you should be taken care of. But the Montana farmers can earn a good living, by doing something else, they just won't.

They've got this attitude that they are "Montana Wheat Farmers", and By God, if they have to tax the rest of us to remain "Montana Wheat Farmers", well, that's their God Given Right.

Nope.

As long as you're an able minded and an able bodied American, go find another job.

I'm perfectly willing to "chip in" to take care of someone who can not take care of themselves. But if you just don't want to accept change, then stay the Hell out of my wallet.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03
Two years ago this summer, 2004, we grew a field of wheat and lost our***on it. What kept things almost marginal was that we BALED the STRAW and sold it after the wheat was picked by the 30,000lb combine which loaded the SEMI right in the FIELD and hauled it up the DIRT road to the gravel road to the river terminal. Which is what EVERYONE else does who has a semi, or any truck for that matter. It gets loaded in the field and driven out to wherever.

Now, I need to ask, since the comment is made "everyone else does who has a semi ..." combined with the remark "we grew a field of wheat ...".

This isn't what I hear to be a "wheat" operation .... I don't hear 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 acres, I don't hear custom cutters, and I don't hear a real experience .... not too many real wheat farmers, I don't care where they're at, have 10 or 15 "semi's" sitting around all year waiting for wheat season .... sorry, got to blow the whistle on this story ...

[MichaelSol]

Combined Federal Agriculture Subsidy/per acre farmed
1995-2004

Illinois $392/acre
Wisconsin, $228
Indiana, $345
Iowa, $402
Ohio, $273
Texas, $98.00
Montana, $58.00

"They can have the data presented to them that they are wrong and yet they refuse to change their opinon."

We'll see how honest edbenton is here, or if he's just full of hot air too ...

[Anonymous]

Hmm...around here we CUT hay and MOW the lawn.

We have a semi truck (only 80k though) and it goes right into the field like anything else will. Down the gravel road, across the bridge build in the mid-60's and a left turn on the tar and chip blacktop road.

Two years ago this summer, 2004, we grew a field of wheat and lost our***on it. What kept things almost marginal was that we BALED the STRAW and sold it after the wheat was picked by the 30,000lb combine which loaded the SEMI right in the FIELD and hauled it up the DIRT road to the gravel road to the river terminal. Which is what EVERYONE else does who has a semi, or any truck for that matter. It gets loaded in the field and driven out to wherever.

Moral of the story... Stick to the highway you guys, go for the sunday drive with your families, take pictures and say "look at the pretty tractor" to your kids (provided they're not allergic to the dust).

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Funny,
We still "mow" hay down here...guess we're just 40 years behind the times.[:D]

Wouldn't surprise me. But a Swather sure makes it easier and faster.

[MichaelSol]

Greyhounds' solution a year ago:

QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds
That's like the combine and the trucks. The farmer has to "balance his/her line". He/she has to coordinate the trucks with the combine. If the farmer has to truck his grain farther to the elevator so be it. The farmer needs to hire more trucks. There is no reason that a 105K truck can't go into a field. It's a matter of ground pressure, and that can be solved by putting more axles under the truck.

Just slide more axles under the truck.

"Ground pressure."

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds
The fact that the Montana wheat farmers absolutely depend on Federal subsidies (money taken from the rest of us actually doing productive work and actually earn our livings) proves that.

Now you work harder than farmers do, and you think you do productive work and they don't?

You and your arrogance take the cake.

Yes, and as you stumbled onto before, Illinois farmers -- the ones in the fields, not the ones sitting on the roadside watching -- get about six times the subsidy per acre as Montana farmers, sucking more money from "the rest of us."

Nice to see you just once again come right out and attack Montana farmers.

That's really what its just all about for you, isn't it? An Arm chair schoolboy with an office job, condescending to people that work hard for a living.

Just really makes you feel good doesn't it?

[edbenton]

Greyhound right on there I am sick and tired of people in the northwest thinking they are always right. That seems to be a problem from around San Fransico to around Montana in a diagnal line. Around here at least people do admit mistakes up there people refuse to admit mistakes it seems. They can have the data presented to them that they are wrong and yet they refuse to change their opinon.

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

The word used was "swathed" hay.

Stopped "mowing" hay about 40 years ago when the first Swathers came out.

I would not expect you to know the difference.

Nor anything else about the grain or farming industry, and so I deleted the posts.

You don't now anything about wheat, about the use of trucks in the industry, and as near as your posts show, nothing about wheat and the rail industry either. It occured to me that further exchanges with you were a waste of everyone's time, a point you continue to prove by now trying to show that the wheat industry is the same as you playing soldiers.

Well, we didn't "play" soldiers. We were soldiers.

Did you really put a truck through a bridge? Or did you make that up too? Swathed? hay? I know "mow", "rake" and "bale", but "swathed"? And I was bailing hay that had been "mowed" not 40 years ago.

What I know about wheat is that farms that specialize in wheat have about half the income of other farms in the US, and their "farmers" have to hold other jobs to support their families.

Other fams may use wheat as part of a crop rotation program, but it's a looser. Farms that can switch from wheat to other crops have done so. Montana farmers have such poor land that they can not switch and they're basically on welfare, relying on government handouts to keep going.

It's hard for them to rely on money the government takes from other working people, but they do. And they seek to blame someone else for their misfortune. And the BNSF is a handy target..

Wheat is an "inferior good". The more people earn, the less they use. When they're given the choice, through more prosperity, people will substitute other foods like fresh meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. In the last 100 years the per person consumption of wheat in the US has fallen in half. So the Montana farms, that can't grow anything else, rely on handouts and blaming the BNSF. It's alway nice and comforting to blame someone else for the fact that you can't make a iiving.

Well, the BNSF can't ( and shouldn't) have to subsidize people who won't change when the comodity they produce is in decreased demand.

Move! Go find someway else to earn a living. My father had to do that when he lost his farm the year I was born. I've had to do that. No one on This Earth needs Montana wheat enough to pay for what it costs to grow it. The fact that the Montana wheat farmers absolutely depend on Federal subsidies (money taken from the rest of us actually doing productive work and actually earning our own livings) proves that.

We do need a profitable, efficient rail network - a network that can not be expect to bail out obsolete wheat farms.

[edblysard]

Funny,
We still "mow" hay down here...guess we're just 40 years behind the times.[:D]

[MichaelSol]

The word used was "swathed" hay.

Stopped "mowing" hay about 40 years ago when the first Swathers came out.

I would not expect you to know the difference.

Nor anything else about the grain or farming industry, and so I deleted the posts.

You don't now anything about wheat, about the use of trucks in the industry, and as near as your posts show, nothing about wheat and the rail industry either. It occured to me that further exchanges with you were a waste of everyone's time, a point you continue to prove by now trying to show that the wheat industry is the same as you playing soldiers.

You're a highway farmer trying to tell the industry how they should do it, because you're so much smarter than the farmers.

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

I have yet to see or hear of a 105k truck loading directly from a field except where the field in question is adjacent to a suitable highway. Most county roads in Washington and Idaho still have weight restrictions that would prohibit fully loaded highway trucks. Otherwise highway truckers would be bypassing weigh stations via county roads as modus operandi, not as a risk taking exercise.

First, so what happened to Sol's posts? The ones where he claimed to have put a wheat truck "through" a bridge and "shaved" hay. He had me there. I've never done either of those things. (In Illinois, the farmers "mow'" the hay.)

Such posts are now gone.

And no, I've never put a truck "through" a bridge, although I had the chance a time or two. Some years ago I had some experience taking trucks off road. I was a platoon leader in the US Army's 100th Transportation Company. Now, thankfully, nobody ever shot at me and I never had to shoot anybody. (I fought the war in Virginia) But we'd take those duece and a halves out on the beach at night to pick up cargo from landing craft in a "Logistics Over the Shore" operation. And the driver's couldn't turn their headlights on. Then we'd hide the trucks in the woods during the day. Got a few stuck but we could handle that. My platoon was 20 duece and a halves, their drivers, plus my 1/4 ton (aka, a jeep).

Latter, in the Illinois National Guard, I had a platoon of 20 tractor trailers in the 1644th. They went off road a lot and hid in the woods too. Again, I never had one go through a bridge. I guess my drivers and I understood bridge weight limits. I had this little female driver, stood about 5'3", get her semi down in the sand. At night, with no headlights,
she got it out by herself in about two minutes.

So don't be telling me that large trucks can not go into fields and load grain from a combine. I know they can. I've seen it. And I've had experience running trucks off road.
But you do need to pay attention to the bridge weight limits. At least here, the governments have imporved the rural road networks, including the water crossings, to the point where large trucks can serve the farms.

As far as FM not seeing a 105 ton truck loading in a field UNLESS it's next to a proper highway, of course. You have to have a proper rural road network. And once you do, the rail branch lines are obsolete.

And FM needs to pay attention to Farmer03's post. It's illegal to use rural roads as through truck routes here too. But it's not illegal to use them for local delivery/pick-up, which is what the farmer said. As long as he's going to or from a field he's legal. Running around a highway scale here is just as illegal as it is in the Northwest.

Same thing here in unicorporated Lake County, Illinois. You can't legally bring a large tractor-trailer down the street in front of my house, UNLESS, you're making a local delivery or pick-up. Otherwise, there'd be no moving vans here.

Trains and trucks are but tools. You use each one to your best advantage. And that advantage changes over time.

[Anonymous]

I have yet to see or hear of a 105k truck loading directly from a field except where the field in question is adjacent to a suitable highway. Most county roads in Washington and Idaho still have weight restrictions that would prohibit fully loaded highway trucks. Otherwise highway truckers would be bypassing weigh stations via county roads as modus operandi, not as a risk taking exercise.

[edbenton]

There is a huge difference in custom cutters and regular farmers who own their trucks. Custom cutters have to be adaptable to what ever feild and road conditons they have to face out there. A farmer that has his own truck has to figure on the wait time at the elevator then the milage to and from the fields to get there. I am getting sick and tired of people who use their school knowledge to try to explain who things ARE SUPPOSED to be out in the real world.

[nanaimo73]

At this point Gabe would bring up something insightful.


[sigh]

[daveklepper]

The USA has a highway based economy unlike Switzerland, and railroads have fitted themselves into the economy. Still, freight railroading is the ONLY transportation mode that PAYS ITS OWN WAY in the USA when LAND USE is included.

[MP173]

We used to go "to the river" sometimes on Sunday afternoon to go fishing or just to go for a drive.

Those ****** bridges with the wooded planks on the deck scared the **** out of me then, and probably would today.

Gone, but not forgotten.

ed

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03

Combines nowadays are pushing 30,000lbs. No matter how big the tires, mud is mud. If you get stuck you end up breaking stuff.

Semis (in my area anyway) are allowed to go down any road as they're hauling out of the field (picking up) or delivering (ag lime for example).

And there will always be a need for elevators away from barge/rail terminals. Not everybody hauls their grain straight out of the field to the terminal. Most store it and whoever doesn't store it on farm has to take it to an elevator for storage.

Combines are getting bigger all the time, and I agree, you can get stuck; but semis with their truck tires are going to get stuck faster than a 4x4 combine with machinery traction tires.

Good luck when the semi goes through a bridge however .... not too many old rural bridges were engineered for 30 tons, let alone able to carry it 50, 60, 70 years after they were built ...

Suprisingly enough throughout the area I'm in anyway, the majority of those 'old bridges' have been replaced by nice wide bridges or have been replaced by box culverts.

Thanks farmer03. It's always helpful to have a farmer around when we're talking about farm related topics. I didn't mean to imply that all the grain came directly out of the field to a river terminal. But I could have done a better job of explaining things. And you straightned it out.

My point remains that there are now good road networks that can accomodate large, efficient combination trucks to move the grain from the field to a high volume terminal. Those same trucks can move it into and out of storage if that's desireable or necessary

The rural population gets far greater benifits from this road network than it ever did from the obsolete rail branch line network. As examples, they can ride to church in a warm car, access better shopping oportunities at will, and emergency services can reach them at a much greater speed with much better, and heavier equipment. To maintain an unneeded rail branch line network in addition to the rural road network was a money loosing proposition. Something that was painfully obvious to us at the ICG in the 1970's.

I remember those old bridges. In my part of central Illinois they had wooden decks that rattled pretty well when you drove over them. As you said, they're pretty well gone now. Replaced with more modern structures to support an efficient rural road network that made the rail branches obsolete.