Western Railroad Discussion > UPS Peak Season Question

Good Evening:

Did UP or BNSF have any service failures during the UPS peak season before Christmas? If there was anything posted on here, I missed it.

Thank you in advance.

I don't know what the definition of a peak season failure is but BN had lots of late Z's this year for many different reasons. 

I have to ask the OP this question - WHY would a company make public any problems they encounter while performing their business?  Follow that with WHY would any of the RRs want to 'damage' their biggest customer(s) reputation by  publicizing THEIR failures that affected UPS, etc?

Like the prices that UPS has negotiated with each RR Intermodal operation, statistical reports are 'company confidential' by all parties.

 

Sometimes the class ones will publicize no failures to promote their ability to move traffic. I just had not heard if this occurred with any of them.

Attaining Zero Service Failures for UPS in Peak Season was a huge goal when I was with the Santa Fe.
We accomplished it in 1994 for the first time by any railroad.  Several UPS executives visited us in the
System Operations Center the following month, and they were ecstatic, even more than we were.
Nothing is more satisfying than pleasing your customers.

If any carrier hit that goal this past season, I would expect the news to get out since it is a major accomplishment.
For the carriers that use PSR, they likely know those letters do not stand for Peak Season Railroading.
 

I  searched TO and found this season of zero failures, but it's been awhile ago!

mapboy 

Date: 12/23/02 20:01
This just in....ZERO DEFECTS !
Author: chilli2002 United Parcel Peak Season has ended on the BNSF with ZERO service failures. All critical UPS loads are at their destination as far as rail transport is concerned. Volume was down a bit this year due to the economy, but about 27,000 UPS vans were handled in 26 days, due to the shortened time frame between Thanskgiving and Christmas. The streak of failure-free service for UPS now stands around 60 days straight, with a count of about 60,000 loads.

One year, one railroad (can't remember whether UP or BNSF) missed 100% peak season on account of one fluky incident in which two trains passing at speed happened to have opened container doors that swung out and hit each other, causing delays. (I want to say this was on the east end of the BNSF transcon and at least one of the trains was a UP trackage rights Z train, could be wrong, though.) So they do get close...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/22 01:22 by FiestaFoamer.

Seventyfive Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For the carriers that use PSR, they likely know
> those letters do not stand for Peak Season
> Railroading.

Ha!  Good one.

Andy

Seventyfive Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Attaining Zero Service Failures for UPS in Peak
> Season was a huge goal when I was with the Santa
> Fe.
> We accomplished it in 1994 for the first time by
> any railroad.  Several UPS executives visited us
> in the
> System Operations Center the following month, and
> they were ecstatic, even more than we were.
> Nothing is more satisfying than pleasing your
> customers.
>
> If any carrier hit that goal this past season, I
> would expect the news to get out since it is a
> major accomplishment.
> For the carriers that use PSR, they likely know
> those letters do not stand for Peak Season
> Railroading.
>  

I wonder how much thanks was passed down to the locomotive engineers, conductors, signal maintainers, MOW folks, etc. that helped make it happen? It would be nice, but backslapping in some corporate office seldom flows down to the rank and file.

BRAtkinson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have to ask the OP this question - WHY would a
> company make public any problems they encounter
> while performing their business?  Follow that
> with WHY would any of the RRs want to 'damage'
> their biggest customer(s) reputation by 
> publicizing THEIR failures that affected UPS,
> etc?
>
> Like the prices that UPS has negotiated with each
> RR Intermodal operation, statistical reports are
> 'company confidential' by all parties.
>
>  

The fact that this is proprietary information is surely true, and for good reasons. Just as it's surely true that UPS is hyperaware of each and any every service failure, including any that cut close to the trailing edge of the On Time Arrival Window. 

But in defense of the OP, many of the non-employee observers on this site (and maybe some of the anonymous employees here too, but that could be risky for them) are in a great position to call bulls*** on any self-promotional claims made by the railroad (or the shipper even)  around peak season or any other publicly released operational performance metrics. 

Grade crossing accidents are probably the most common delay.

Weather for the hiline 

UPS determines the success of Peak Season, they make the call on failures or on time deliveries. The railroad gets the info from their liaison at UPS. I doubt UPS would object to a railroad claiming a perfect peak season as long as it was true. Nobody is going to publicly announce their failures.

irhoghead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Seventyfive Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Attaining Zero Service Failures for UPS in Peak
> > Season was a huge goal when I was with the
> Santa
> > Fe.
> > We accomplished it in 1994 for the first time
> by
> > any railroad.  Several UPS executives visited
> us
> > in the
> > System Operations Center the following month,
> and
> > they were ecstatic, even more than we were.
> > Nothing is more satisfying than pleasing your
> > customers.
> >
> > If any carrier hit that goal this past season,
> I
> > would expect the news to get out since it is a
> > major accomplishment.
> > For the carriers that use PSR, they likely know
> > those letters do not stand for Peak Season
> > Railroading.
> >  
>
> I wonder how much thanks was passed down to the
> locomotive engineers, conductors, signal
> maintainers, MOW folks, etc. that helped make it
> happen? It would be nice, but backslapping in some
> corporate office seldom flows down to the rank and
> file.

There was a day when the rank and file may enjoy a free lunch at company expense to celebrate such successes, but nowadays it's more like....go home get rested get on another train.