Western Railroad Discussion > PSR preview ?

I'm pretty sure the "love it or hate it" concept of "PSR" was still years away, but on March 2, 2013 UP eastbound manifest QRVNPP was dragging upgrade at Emory, Utah with three units on the opint, 178 cars of mixed freight, and a single DP unit cut in 124 cars deep.  The consist info:  121 loads, 57 empties, 16108 tons, 11706 feet.  Signs of things to come!

Bob   

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Nice pic. Amazing four units kept this train moving upgrade.
JB

If I recall correctly, the QRVNPP was UP's train symbol for its "Express Lane" hot perishable service out of Northern California (the last "P" in the symbol for "Perishables"). 

This is an excellent example on how a railroad starts out with a good idea to get more competitive with trucking; but soon the service gets hijacked by the "bean counters" operating department and the train becomes just another vehicle for seeing how much freight can be put on what then becomes just another slow moving land barge.  This is followed quickly with the hot perishable business then disappearing from the tracks and back onto the highways in trucks.

Fast forward to today and this train is symbolled the MRVNP and is always a huge, monster drag with almost no carload perishable traffic in its consist.  In addition, the railroads' carload freight business as degraded down to a mover of mainly only bulk freight commodities that can tolerate the railroads' slow and erratic service (mainly because there is not economic viable alternative to transport these bulk commodities).  It's no wonder why the railroads' traffic base keeps eroding.

This in turn leads the railroads to continue to further consolidate and try to "get more blood out of the turnip" as a means to grow profits - a strategy that has pretty much reached the end of what is viable to get anything more from.

Duncan wins the interweb today. 💯% spot on.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

Duncan Wrote:
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> This is followed quickly with the hot
> perishable business then disappearing from the
> tracks and back onto the highways in trucks.
>

In management's eyes: "Yeah, well, those customers are a pain to deal with anyway."

bobdavis Wrote:
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> I'm pretty sure the "love it or hate it" concept
> of "PSR" was still years away, but on March 2,
> 2013 UP eastbound manifest QRVNPP was dragging
> upgrade at Emory, Utah with three units on the
> opint, 178 cars of mixed freight, and a single DP
> unit cut in 124 cars deep. 

Very nice photo.

I remember how QRVNPP ran over Donner back then. Roseville would slap on unmanned helpers on the rear (1-2 units, usually 52xx GEVOs) and remove them at Sparks. Mid-train DPU almost always stayed going east out of Sparks.

> Signs of things to come!
>
> Bob   

There's a different reason this is a PSR preview, as stock buybacks were the new trend 13-14 years ago, not just UP but other industries where stock prices needed to be propped up. I'll elaborate more on my next post.

Duncan Wrote:
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> This in turn leads the railroads to continue to
> further consolidate and try to "get more blood out
> of the turnip" as a means to grow profits - a
> strategy that has pretty much reached the end of
> what is viable to get anything more from.

Don't take my nitpick personally.

UP didn't grow profits back then. In 2012, they had cash flow negative of $154 million out of $3.9 billion in revenue. I've been hinting this for years, but hindsight makes me blunt. They were cutting costs so the cash ("profits") would go to stock buybacks to prop up the stock price. They didn't care whether they "grew profits" or not, but they were desperate to appease their Wall St. puppeteers. So railroaders were subjected to workplace oppression so "ratios" and other dumb math metrics would look good.

I know criticizing "growing profits" is fashionable here on TO, but the problems are far beyond simple greed.

Duncan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If I recall correctly, the QRVNPP was UP's train
> symbol for its "Express Lane" hot perishable
> service out of Northern California (the last "P"
> in the symbol for "Perishables"). 

Yes, the last "P" in the symbol indicated perishables.  This train did have 8 reefers in the consist; the rest was mostly box, tanks, and covered hoppers.  Years ago two trains with the second "P" in the symbol ran regularly on the UP Pocatello Sub - one out of Hinkle, Ore., the other out of Pocatello, Id., and both always carried a large block of reefers, sometimes as many as 100 of them.  I'm 99% sure that most of that traffic is now gone.

Bob

bobdavis Wrote:
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> Duncan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > If I recall correctly, the QRVNPP was UP's
> train
> > symbol for its "Express Lane" hot perishable
> > service out of Northern California (the last
> "P"
> > in the symbol for "Perishables"). 
>
> Yes, the last "P" in the symbol indicated
> perishables.  This train did have 8 reefers in
> the consist; the rest was mostly box, tanks, and
> covered hoppers.  Years ago two trains with the
> second "P" in the symbol ran regularly on the UP
> Pocatello Sub - one out of Hinkle, Ore., the other
> out of Pocatello, Id., and both always carried a
> large block of reefers, sometimes as many as 100
> of them.  I'm 99% sure that most of that traffic
> is now gone.
>
> Bob

I remember those as well, the QHKNPP (symbolled the HF (Hinkle Fruit) before that), and the QPCNPP (symbolled the PF (Pocatello Fruit) before that).  In the days of the HF and PF, you'd also get a NF (Nampa Fruit) train as well.  "Fruit" is mostly a mis-nomer as these train mostly carried vegetable products (with much of that being potatoes).

In asking about the current status of UP's perishable traffic, when I spent a few days in June on the UP in Oregon, I did see quite a few eastbound loaded reefers in trains, so UP does still handle a good amount of perishable business out of the PNW.  As I mentioned above, a lot of this is potatoes (like frozen french fries) which can handle a more time consuming rail transit; but much of California's agriculture business are things that are more "fresh" and need a fast transit time before it spoils, traffic that can't handle UP's long transit hauls.