Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX article about HH in Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/after-handing-score-to-ackman-the-railroad-guru-is-on-new-tear

Pre-blocking cars at origin point. WOW! what an original concept.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/17 09:00 by elu34ch.

There's nothing new under the sun.

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Has the flavor of a puff piece. There are firms which shop articles or scripts to TV stations, investment firms, or magazines for the CEO's vanity, etc.

(After a while you can see these things a mile off. There are firms which specialize in this kind of promotion for small biotech firms, computer companies, etc. It helps to sharpen your critical thinking when you look for specifics, things you can measure and verify independently, and rising tide situations.)

Sanborn is trying to keep her job by going along with EHH. She needs 30 years in RR retirement to retire at 60 years, but with her massive salary that hardly makes a difference. Pre-blocking of cars, at origin, as mentioned above, has been going on since the 1950's or before. I have the schedule books to prove it. But if you close critical hump yards now, like EHH has done, you almost have to do it. The thing about today versus the 1950's, is that then there was a lot of priority traffic, freight forwarders, perishables, auto parts, etc that demanded fast service. The many RR's were competitive. Most of that, especialy in CSX/NS territory has vanished or been converted to intermodal. What is left is bulk freight, heavy stuff that takes 3-4 trucks to haul, not one or two of the high priority stuff. Railroads today consider this mostly captive. They can charge a rate they want with lousy service and get away with it. The big RR's really do not compete that much and do not try to steal each other's business. They are happy with the 'captive markets' they feel they have. So far in my area EHH's yard closures and schedule changes in carload services has created an imbalance of trains, erratic block volumes day to day, and a number of mis-classifications, and a bunch of tiny trains. Why does a tub of coal come to Wilsmere?