Western Railroad Discussion > Cold Train sues BNSF

As presented, this is a very interesting claim:

"In April 2014, BNSF notified Cold Train that it was canceling 72-hour shipments to Chicago and starting 125-hour service, the suit said.""

Obviously that would kill the business. It certainly seems possible that BNSF decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I guess it wouldn't be the first time with produce?

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/apr/09/fruit-shipper-sues-bnsf-railroad/

Railroad marketing department over-promises and under-delivers due to failure to talk to operating folks and develop realistic goals? No way (sarcasm)!  Its been happening for years and its time someone held Class 1 Railroads accountable for failing to keep promises.   If I was Cold Train, I would involve the STB.  

 

To slightly disagree with Mr. Norton, the STB will do nothing but hold meaningless hearings, keep
the thing as a civil suit and prove damages. BNSF (and their owner) will be much more motivated
by a public and open loss of face.

Out

callum_out Wrote:
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> To slightly disagree with Mr. Norton, the STB will
> do nothing but hold meaningless hearings, keep
> the thing as a civil suit and prove damages. BNSF
> (and their owner) will be much more motivated
> by a public and open loss of face.
>
> Out
That happened at MidAmerican power.  Warren Buffett was very irritated with local news people asking him questions about some very minor issue that Berkshire's MidAmerican was stalling on. He wanted to talk about big, important issues, and news people kept asking him about this problem.

It was resolved the next day.

I think there is a legitimate criticism out there about the costs of trucking most produce, and railways offer a potential solution to reduce emissions, but here we find that some may be delibaretly preventing the business.

Based on the extensive article in Warbonnet magazine (first quarter) 2008 about historic citrus operations, I would say BNSF probably realizes that shipping produce is only marginally profitable at best!

Did the lengthening of the schedule occur around the time that the Northern Tier was melting down and the Empire Builder was annulled last year?

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> Did the lengthening of the schedule occur around
> the time that the Northern Tier was melting down
> and the Empire Builder was annulled last year?

Yes.

The truth is high priority traffic is very marginal for railroads. They often produce little or no extra revenue than general freight on a carload basis, but the associated costs in extra fuel, motive power, and delays to other trains quickly dwindle the profit down to marginal levels. Railroads work best when all the traffic has the same priority and moves at the same speed. And therein lies the reason why the Southern Transcon works as a intermodal corridor and the Northern Transcon does not. On the Southern Transcon most of the traffic is high priority intermodal traffic, and the slower trains are powered up to try and keep up with the priority traffic. But last year on the Northern Transcon, when Grain and Export Coal traffic was already running at record levels, and new Crude Oil traffic quickly put capacity at a premium, topped by the winter from hell. The high priority Z trains became the odd man out, and were replaced as Q trains. UPS just as quickly moved most of their shipments to UP which started running an expedited train for that business.
I view this change in service as the last straw to break in the lie that was behind the BNSF merger in the first place. Krebs had convinced Grinstein that Krebs could make the BN into a Intermodal Powerhouse like the ATSF. But with the downgrading of service on the Northern Transcon, the different parts of the BNSF have reverted to what they always have been. I'm not saying BNSF is a failed railroad, far from it. It's perhaps the best railroad in North America, but there were plenty of mis-steps and ill conceived ideas that had to be put to rest for BNSF to find it's true self.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

BurtNorton Wrote:
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> Railroad marketing department over-promises and
> under-delivers due to failure to talk to operating
> folks and develop realistic goals?

Marketing didn't promise anything that operations hadn't been delivering for at least the last 20 years.  Operations fell down big time both in the northern tier and the transcon due to BNSF bringing in too many young unschooled pups, especially those who's presence help BNSF to meet its self-imposed diversity & inclusion quotas.

If BNSF were to stop hiring perky young things with degrees in sociology and previous work experience as a server at Joe T. Garcia's, and then rapidly promoting them to Hub Manager, things might improve.

You mean to say that a warm body won't fill every job? Those of us who bailed on my previous
employer are watching each Quarterly look worse and worse, the BNSF isn't exempt from the
same problems.

Out

Bandito Wrote:
.  Operations fell down big time both in the
> northern tier and the transcon due to BNSF
> bringing in too many young unschooled pups,
> especially those who's presence help BNSF to meet
> its self-imposed diversity & inclusion quotas.

What are you saying here? Are you to suggest  that diversity and inclsion may be a contributing factor to operational failure? 


> If BNSF were to stop hiring perky young things
> with degrees in sociology and previous work
> experience as a server at Joe T. Garcia's, and
> then rapidly promoting them to Hub Manager, things
> might improve.

This part of your remark I do agree with.

Diversity is a good thing for any company, including BNSF. Inexperienced "perky young things" as you refer to them,  being hired and rapidly being promoted is a factor  to operational breakdown. 

SantaFeRuss



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/15 20:58 by SantaFeRuss.

The Quincy intermodal hub as they like to call it in Quincy got money to develop facilities without any promise of direct rail service. You know "built it and they will come". If you dont know, Quincy is out in the middle of nowhere, WA.  BNSF drug feet for several years on picking up cars to haul to Seattle/Tacoma for overseas shipments. Cold Train then came along with a proposal for shipments to the East and for some reason the railroad bought off on the deal. Ted has it right I think that alot of marginal service and high priority service was cut in an effort to dig out of the winter of 13/14.
Roger Beckett

Diversity and inclusion are nice as side benefits, but they make lousy goals- ability and experience are what make things move, not genetics or sociology.

Even on old Penn Central and Conrail Marketing and Sales could not make changes in freight service with out approval of Transportation.That is why Marketing had a Service Planning Department. Later that function was transferred to Transportation, but the mission of both was to try to meet markets needs but also live with Transportation's limitations. I was in both. I loved that type of work and I have a degree in Sociology. You gained respect for both sides of the issue, and really learn the railroad.

Before de-regulation of box car commodities railroads did make little or no money on perishables. . Altho there could be no contracts before de-reg that could guarantee service there were a number of ways shipper and receivers could take advantage of certain things like 'market decline claims' when a car was a day or two late and the market price of the product fell so they would claim against the railroad for a lower rate. It was very hard for the railroad to prove the marketprice actually declined. The receivers were not the most scrupulous of customers. This occurred even after the ICC permitted exclusion of ice reefers and support facilities around the 1970s.

Now, with perishables or other refrigerated commodities de-regulated for 25 years or more, and the ability to have confidential contracts between railroad and customer, you cannot really say that railroads probably loose money on this business, because you do not know the rates and the costs!  It is hard to believe UP would maintain a fleet of over 5500 GPS equipped reefers if they were not making money on it. . .

rantoul Wrote:
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> Exactly, no way UP or CSX is losing money on this
> service that they participated in creating.  The
> BNSF story, an example of oligopoly's at work. 
> Capitalist Mr. Buffet should be ashamed as this
> came about under his ownership, blaming it on
> weather, a temporary condition, is a cop-out. 
> Hey STB, perhaps 'open access to provide this
> customer service' would fix this.

For those who have the copy of Berkshire Hathaway's latest Annual Report, and relishes reading between the lines, Warren Buffett IS ashamed and expresses disappointment with the BNSF, in a subtle way for many, but obvious to me. Many of the excerpts have already made financial media, for those who are adept at using the search engines.

Matt Rose's "promotion" and Carl Ice as the replacement might be Uncle Warren's real feelings on the matter. The cop-out blaming is just to appease the feel-good BRK shareholders. I know many on TO were singing praises for Matt Rose, but I think this seals the deal that he won't be Warren Buffett's successor.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/15 13:09 by cchan006.

Response to several previous  above after my own two bits. The Cold Train service with BNSF was probably a contract and not a tariff, which has to be published somewhere, on paper or on-line and I have not tried to check that. Assuming it is a contract, railroads often do not agree to to certain day or hour end to end service guarantees. That was my experience dealing with the Tropicana train years ago. Maybe things have changed now. I think it is sad BNSF had to lengthen schedules due to the very real problems they faced last winter and previous. But at least they were public about it. No time in recent history has the ex-GN High Line and NP main had to deal with a huge increase in traffic, mainline construction, and a traffic mix it had never experienced. The weather up there has not worsened over the years. Go back and read some old Trains mag articles. Back years ago they had plenty of delays when in semi-good weather the railroad could easily handle the passenger and freight train necessary to run the. Times do change.

I do think real perishables, not frozen potatoes which was the staple for the remaining UP reefer business for many years, does deserve expedited service on intermodal trains or schedules for carload trains to do that coast to coast. I've done studies on that, and by published stack train  (lowest priority intermodal) BNSF / UP / CSX / NS stack or mixed carload freight trains could offer seven day dock to dock CARLOAD  service from many west coast to east coasts destinations. I have the schedules to prove it.

So it is up to the railroads if they want to provide this service, and offer it to shippers/receivers whomever pays for it, fine. It is all de-regulated so it is a free market.

I think Cold Train was formed by several retired railroad executives. What kind of contracts did they make with BNSF? They should also know the vagaries of railroad service, which makes it curious why they would sue. Somewhere there-in lies the real answer to this lawsuit.

Does anyone think there might be a role in the future for Amtrak to pickup this type of service, tagged to the end of passenger trains?  Seems logical to meet the time frames...or has the experience with Amtrak hauling LCL freight several years ago made this unlikely, "unless hell freezes over"?

-j

tp117 Wrote:
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> I do think real perishables, not frozen potatoes
> which was the staple for the remaining UP reefer
> business for many years, does deserve expedited
> service on intermodal trains or schedules