The dark cloud on the horizon

"I've been working on the railroad, all the live long day"

 

Is he referring to barges and boats as the other way of moving freight, or is there some cryptic meaning referring to another form of transport?

I was up near Detroit the other day, making a delivery to a customer in Warren, Michigan, and stopped in for dinner at the Warren Buffet. Good prices, food was decent, but I thought the dessert menu leaft a little bit to be desired.

 

There are many ways to transport freight and most mid to large trucking companies use them all the time...there are loads that can get many days or weeks on delivery time and some that are needed tomorrow it is not a new horrible thing coming it's the railroad/container...........been around for a long time and has always been another choice for tranporting freight...........I belive that if you look at the reason for most companies not offering the miles they use to #1) They really never gave those miles but due to drivers going to thier company schools and signing contracts they have to be very carefull what they say for legal reasons......the first and most important reason when dealing with a recruiter GET EVERY THING IN WRITING.........if the recruiter won't give it to you in writting then they are hiding something it's that simple.if you join up then it's your fault when you don't get what you thought you should havedon't blame anyone else. And #2) Just the sheer numbers of trucking companies I mean is it really that complicated ..........no the more companies the less freight......wow! that was hard to figure out.

 

Actually, my company works hand in hand with the railroads, and we make some of our very best money when the railroads fail to deliver on time or encounter any other problems. I delivered a load last Sunday morning to Louisiana from Chicago. It was emergency work because the railroads had not gotten the loads in place in time and the customer needed the product. We shipped about 14-16 truckloads down there over the week. I haven't seen the billing for that load yet, but I expect that I made well over 800 for that particular load. Picked up Sat at 1 am, delivered Sun at 7 am.

The rails can move product in bulk, but they are very limited in their ability to handle time sensitive loads. They are also saturated and unable to easily add more capacity to their system because of the incredibly high costs they pay for infrastructure.

Companies that embrace rail transport and work with them will prosper. Companies that see them as the enemy will find themselves outside of the best opportunities. We allow them to do much of the longhaul heavy work and concentrate on doing what we do best, which is completing the delivery when the customer has no rail access. We handle about 65,000 rail cars a year, unloading and delivering them to the customer, operate transloading facilities for the railroads, and consider them to be partners, not enemies. And we make a good living by doing so. We focus on being strong in the areas where they are weak, and it works well.

 

I'm not too worried about rail, there are approaching capacity especiallt transcontinental ( look at how many train routes there are across the rockies and the mississippi river). Most of the near term excess capacity will go to new coal fired power plants and as Burky pointed out its very hard to add new capacity to the system.

 

Of course trucking companies lock into a relationship with this mode of transportation and several others as I mentioned, mine does and they are very good at it and profitable, but that in turn makes the leftovers shorter routes and runs.............which goes back to the original question why miles are dropping. again not hard to figure out and no new concepts being introduced. A driver can only run so much and that's that(they want good miles they want home time they want everything else, well guess what no company out there like that......if there was we would all be working for them and everyone else would be out of buisness). There is always going to be a disgruntled driver out there that just seems not to be able to put two and two together, the companies are going to cut costs period and if the driver doesn't want to driver for the amount they offer then the driver can go else were, there is always another driver out there to fill his shoes which brings up recruiting pratices and everything else, the over all system is not designed for the driver...................it is designed for the companies to make money. (hope this is not new news to you) If the drivers don't set standards themselves then they get what's coming.

 

Have you noticed the number of warehouse buildings that are being built around the country?

There are many along the lines of the RR.