Western Railroad Discussion > Should railroads care about customers?

The Atlantic has an article about Jim Hackett, the CEO of Ford Motor.  Hackett was an unexpected choice for the auto company, coming from Steelcase, the furniture maker.  He isn't a gear head, and he's not a finance guy.  He's about the experience Ford delivers to its customers.

Maybe it's time for railroads to create that same experience.  Interacting with a supplier that anticipates needs, has orders at the loading dock when expected, and is flawless in its service.  With rail people who speak and understand the customer's needs and expectations.

Not surprisingly, design thinking has generated a lot of pushback in a business accustomed to pushing products out the door.

More:


We live in the age of user experience.Our lives are made up of human-machine interactions—with smartphones, televisions, internet-enabled parking meters that don’t accept quarters— that have the power to delight and, often, infuriate. (“Maddening” is Hackett’s one-word description for 90-button TV remotes.) Into this arena has stepped a new class of professional: the user-experience, or UX, designer, whose job is to see a product not from an engineer’s, marketer’s, or legal department’s perspective but from the viewpoint of the user alone. And to insist that the customer should not have to learn to speak the company’s internal language. The company should learn to speak the customer’s.



https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/ford-ceo-jim-hackett-ux-design-thinking/580438/

Gee, yes without the customer, there is no business! === === = === JLH
 

"UX" will become important to railroads when stock analysts decide it is something that is a factor in stock prices.
Right now the railroads' customers are stock analysts; everything they do is an attempt to boost their stock price, and because of this their contribution to the economic efficiency of the nation is sub-optimal (e.g. late shipments, ignored customers, withering markets that once served small lot customers).
Maybe capitalism needs a wee bit of "adult supervision" or regulation to guarentee that these public utilities really do serve the pubic, all of it.

railstiesballast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "UX" will become important to railroads when stock
> analysts decide it is something that is a factor
> in stock prices.
> Right now the railroads' customers are stock
> analysts; everything they do is an attempt to
> boost their stock price, and because of this their
> contribution to the economic efficiency of the
> nation is sub-optimal (e.g. late shipments,
> ignored customers, withering markets that once
> served small lot customers).

Over a decade ago, I was at a conference, talking with the editor of a prominent railroad industry publication. In response to my comment that the industry needed to better fulfill the role of common carrier transportation and attract customers, he said that the industry didn't need to care about attracting customers, they had plenty who had no alternative. I said that stock should do better if a company performed its mission well. He responded that the industry doesn't need investors who care about that; the big funds have most of the stock and only care about the bottom line.

That was over a decade ago.

TAW



> Maybe capitalism needs a wee bit of "adult
> supervision" or regulation to guarentee that these
> public utilities really do serve the pubic, all of
> it.

Monopoly and duopoly thinking rarely ends well. "They need us more than we need them" is an expression of this.

Posted from Android

"adult supervison"  aka Interstate Commerce Commission.  Talk to old timers, I'm one, first seniorty date was in 1970.  Remember the near collapse of the industry, particularly east of Chicago? Remember deregulation of trucking by Pres. Carter at the instigation of Sen. Ted Kennedy?  Remember how reluctant railroad managements of the day supported quasi-deregulation in the form of the Staggers Act in 1980?  The people at the ICC turned out to not be any better at predicting the future than any other regulatory agency.

How does the remaining physical plant of the railroads compare to what it was prior to 1980?

Alex Huff 

Based on my own experiences, if you were a single-carload sort of customer, the railroad gave up on you about 30 years ago.

TJY

icancmp193 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Based on my own experiences, if you were a
> single-carload sort of customer, the railroad gave
> up on you about 30 years ago.
>

30? Frisc...er, uh, BN was telling them to go away almost 40 years ago.

TAW

dsrc512 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "adult supervison"  aka Interstate Commerce
> Commission.  Talk to old timers, I'm one, first
> seniorty date was in 1970.  Remember the near
> collapse of the industry, particularly east of
> Chicago?

ICC was and had been for decades much more punitive than regulatory. It was essentially part of the same process as the government competing with the railroad industry (St. Lawrence Seaway, US highway system, Interstate highway system, airports, air traffic control system, Corps of Engineers dredging to create/maintain navigable rivers). The industry was still paying for the indiscretions of the "Robber Barons" of the 19th Century. Regulation does not need to be punitive, it can and should merely enforce fairness.


> Remember deregulation of trucking by
> Pres. Carter at the instigation of Sen. Ted
> Kennedy? 

...turning truck driving from a respectable middle class profession to being a less than minimum wage job that few want and fewer stay with.

 > Remember how reluctant railroad
> managements of the day supported
> quasi-deregulation in the form of the Staggers Act
> in 1980?

Quasi? More like an introduction to Laissez Faire. If your experience spans the two decades of 1970-1990 you can see the vast difference in interest in customer service.

> How does the remaining physical plant of the
> railroads compare to what it was prior to 1980?
>

Sure it's vastly better. How about usefulness as a common carrier, contribution to the society that grants the rights of a common carrier, degree of expertise in conducting business. The situation is not a dichotomy. There is an appropriate place in the middle.

TAW

Railroads are moving in the exact opposite direction with the exception of BNSF to a degree. PSR is all about making Wall St happy, and they are screwing the customers to do it. For a industry that is so worried about Open Access, they sure are doing everything in their power to justify the legislation.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/19 11:59 by funnelfan.

"Common carrier"? Don't make me laugh! On two occasions in the eighties I used SP to ship a flat load of
godawful pipe assemblies that would have been a permit load by truck. Both times the loads got to their
destinations, wasn't rapid but they made estimated transit time, cost wasn't bad. I damn sure wouldn't try
that today.

Out

Agreed, the ICC is an example of social legislation taken too far and lasting too long.
A big part of the ICC's failure was the railroads' using it as a shield to prevent innovation by protesting competitors' efforts at things like incentive loading, unit trains, premium rates for fast service, etc.
Railroads do fall back on their Public Utility status when defending their rights of way, and are correct in asserting this.
Matt Rose was worried that their utility status could be lost if the courts were to rule they were just another contract operator, not realizing that railroads are a system whereas highway and air carriers are just operators.
An interesting discussion fellows, don't stop quite yet.

Railroads have gotten into private/government "partnerships" in a big way and their actions towards customers  in PSR I would think,  could put that into jeopardy

...turning truck driving from a respectable middle class profession to being a less than minimum wage job that few want and fewer stay with.

Perhaps you haven 't been keeping up with wage rates.  In January, WalMart announced that in February it was bumping driver's wages to about $87,500 a year.
In March, 2018, the American Trucking Association said the average wage for irregular route, long-haul truckers exceeded $53,000, a jump of over $500/yr from May, 2017.
Here in South Dakota, a local trucker is paying drivers about $65,000/yr + fringes.  Five day week, 500 miles a day, 50 weeks a year.

Alex Huff 
 

dsrc512 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...turning truck driving from a respectable middle
> class profession to being a less than minimum wage
> job that few want and fewer stay with.
>
> Perhaps you haven 't been keeping up with wage
> rates.  In January, WalMart announced that in
> February it was bumping driver's wages to about
> $87,500 a year.
> In March, 2018, the American Trucking Association
> said the average wage for irregular route,
> long-haul truckers exceeded $53,000, a jump of
> over $500/yr from May, 2017.
> Here in South Dakota, a local trucker is paying
> drivers about $65,000/yr + fringes.  Five day
> week, 500 miles a day, 50 weeks a year.
>
> Alex Huff 
>  

I had one of those less-than-minnium-wage trucking jobs years ago when I frist started driving.  None of them are below minumm wage anymore. This year there has been a 30% bump in truck driver pay here in Florida also.  Even FLORIDA ROCK & TANK Lines was advertising a  6 day -$1200 wk job, and Publix ($22+hr) was hiring drivers off the street!